The Nave, Winchester Cathedral

This is a sketch for a shoot on 5x4, and the camera and post

processing has been set up for shooting on 5x4 with a well elevated

135 mm lens, using Ektachrome E100VS. However, I am not certain. If I

used a 90 mm lens, I would get far more of the roof in. Then I could

crop the result at the sides to emphasize the height of the building

(there is another photograph of the Nave in the folio, but that is

probably far too wide). What do you think?

 

The big problem was the East window. It was quite a few stops brighter

than the interior. Ektachrome E100VS has a much higher dynamic range

than any digital camera, so I might get away with it if I slightly

underexpose it.

 

The raw camera images were processed with DxO Optics Pro 5 to correct

the lens aberrations, but no other enhancement. I tried HDR on this,

but the result was very unpleasant, so I made a mask of the window

with Virtus Fluid Mask 3 from a very underexposed image, and layered

it onto the normally exposed image. I then used PTGui to emulate the

rising front of a view camera. Finally I ran it through Photoshop CS3

in L*a*b colour space to adjust the saturation and sharpness to what I

would expect from Ektachrome.

...and crop to capture the dramatic height. I recently shot a side by side pano in Beverley minster and found that the single frame down the center of the aisle was much more impressive. I was surprised at you comment about unsatisfactory results with HDR - it does take some practice with the tone mapping, but I was really impressed with the results for church interiors. Take a look at Dennis Aubrey's pictures too for some really impressive HDR shots. Cheers, RickDB

If you didn't use HDR it looks like you did some more post-processing besides adding the window from another exposure: the dynamic range is too limited for my taste and because of that it lacks in depth and 'grandeur' IMO. Also the colors look too saturated. This photo of the vaulting shows what I mean, I hope: it has, I think, more natural colors and dynamic range (although it is HDR). I didn't shoot the classic nave shot because I think the banners are simply horrible in their colors and design.