Tim_Lookingbill

My first and most favorite attempt at showing the feel of bright sunlight on a crispy day after the rain .

Wow! Ed, that's one detailed jpeg you posted. I reached into the shadows and pulled out a lot of low noise detail in the foreground plant. If your Sony is that good, I don't see any reason to use multi-exposure stack blending. Here's my take on how it should look according to the color of dusk/dawn light.

Good points. I struggle with such decisions when editing Raw images that are not HDR. I can't seem to stop the impulse to add clarity to a scene that's actually dreary but by how much to what I remember. I often construct and apply a custom point curve to give a tonal kick to a scene that I later question or regret.

And of course it has to look as complex as an airline cockpit. Does it really matter what tools one uses to render an HDR scene when the user doesn't know what reality is suppose to look like or doesn't have a trained eye? And when you confront said user on this issue they resort to the excuse that it's artistic intent or some other obscure and vague creative force. After it's all said and done no one learns anything!

This isn't a discussion over artistic intent. It's a discussion on what qualifies as an HDR rendering mainly in how it should look. We all can agree the incamera processing of jpegs and unedited Raw converter defaults do not do a good job of rendering an HDR scene. Our eyes tell us something is off, but what is it? That's what we're discussing. It's why we go to the trouble of shooting Raw and spend time processing the file to achieve what we saw that motivated us to trip the shutter. This was not possible with film photography hobbyists due to the limits of lab processing.

Then this is actually an adaptive effect influencing your edits on I'm assuming a downsized preview since you're having to work on a very high resolution Sony A7Riii Raw files. I have the same problem and I too check the numbers both Lab and RGB (green channel for luminance) on a calibrated display that passes the bIack point test down to seeing a difference between about 2RGB patch against 0RGB black field. I have my display calibrated to 100cdm/2. Often in quite a few Raw shots of similarly lit scenes my histogram max black point is too far to the right in ACR 6.7 which makes shadows like your example seem too light and hazy viewing the entire overall image which requires I view at a preview size smaller than 100% zoom. But still your posted enlarged view shows it too dark for that kind of light. I no longer go by numbers for determining how dark shadows should be because I've made myself aware of the adaptive effect of editing high contrast shots like this. I walk away from the display and come back after my eyes have adapted to normal viewing and give it a fresh look and often I've found I've gone too dark. I even had to edit the one I just posted because the elm tree foliage was just too dark. There was a lot of color noise and noise banding so I applied an adjustment brush color tint to blend it for an overall uniform look. Saturation levels of green foliage should reflect the fluorescing effect from being lit by full spectrum light which you've shown in yours but their shadows should be noticeably less saturated and of course darker but with less definition and clarity. This is what diffused sky light does to shadows. There's still some clarity but not as clear and defined as the lighted side. Those kind of tone and color differences is what creates the illusion of reality seen in Vermeer and Rembrandt paintings.

Certainly the one that is not HDR. The one you just posted has greens that are the wrong hue and saturation level for that character and hue of light. And the main center piece red plant has shadows plunged to solid dark red with no leaf definition. In similarly lit and composed scenes I would see detail in the shadows of a back lit subject like the sunset back lighting the Elm tree I took as a single shot Raw below. That's technically an HDR image. The top one is of course the unedited Raw shot at 53mm, 1/60's, f/16, ISO 200.

I must have different rods and cones because I don't share your observation based opinions on how the eyes function when perceiving the effects of various lighting conditions on contrast and color. And no, your sample images do not induce retching. I actually gave you a "Like" for the top one you posted in No Words. I just don't agree that that scene should look the way you made it to qualify as HDR.

Good question and observation. I've been very surprised shooting single exposure HDR scenes and I have to say the amount and texture of the noise in the shadows usually determines just how underexposed to preserve highlights one can go. I can say for certain that it can be hit or miss exposing this way with regard to shadow detail obscured by noise. ISO settings didn't really make a dent more than outside temps combined with just the right amount of full spectrum light. I did a 5 second exposure of snow at my home at night set to the camera's lowest ISO setting which still created a rather dark exposure. Lifting the shadows in post I was surprised to see very little noise and quite a bit of detail in foliage shadows. Cold weather made the difference. Some digital sensors (my Pentax K100D CCD DSLR) react poorly to heat created by long exposures kicking up a lot of noise. Shooting cold weather made me realize this over shooting with CMOS sensors which don't seem to have a lot of noise shooting in hot conditions.

Nice example of HDR scene but it illustrates a lack of knowledge of how light affects color and contrast on both versions. In a backlit scene such as that the foreground shrubs will not crush shadows to black like that. You are now applying a traditional "filmic" style to the overall contrast on both. Once it is stylized and is noticeable then it becomes a statement that is more than the scene, not a depiction of an HDR scene. The problem with what is being said with the stylized rendering is that it is NOT CLEAR and so it doesn't know what it wants to say to the viewer. Are you saying?..."What a beautiful scene of plant life lit with beautiful light"...or..."look how saturated I can make the greens defy the initial overall white balance of a sun low in the sky that makes things darker than they should be"...Is it suppose to look mysterious, dark and moody? Was that the intent? I'm not sure what is being said in both renderings.

And of course you've completely missed my point about contrast appearance obviously controlled by tonemapping techniques. HDR has nothing to do with stylized solarization rendering unless the image is being used as an editorial illustration to support editorial views on a subject not necessarily pictured in the photo. It's no longer a photo but an illustration. My ten years of graphics and art direction background has seen too many of those kind of stylized contrast photos to make me want to puke every time I see it NOT being used for editorial purposes but as a stand alone photograph of some snap shot scene. It's the true sign of an amateur photographer and someone who has no concept of image language or communicating using a still image. Stylized photographs will be self evident that they are saying something more than the photographed subject. HDR is not suppose to look stylized. It gets out of the way and is not noticed.

The whole purpose of HDR is to show the viewer exactly what the photographer saw when they tripped the shutter no matter how challenging the dynamic range. If not then what's the point of going to the trouble of rendering the scene in a Raw processor? Also overcast cloudy day is not an HDR scene. With regard to contrast the farther away the subject is in a brightly lit sunny scene such as a landscape the less contrast and definition. The closer the subjects are the more contrast and definition. Not all elements of a scene needs to be tack sharp and full of definition and clarity. When they are it doesn't look natural. How do you create the illusion of distance and depth? Know what light does to subjects when photographed and remember it when processing in HDR. Michael's "Trolly Tours" kiosk shot shows too much definition and clarity in the shadows of the subject's clothes for such an outdoor overcast cloudy day. Again, not an HDR scene. These are the same contrast rendering principles for conveying realistic scene distance and depth employed by photorealistic painters such as Vermeer and Rembrandt. With digital processing it's quite easy to make a subject that represents a huge area and a lot of distance for instance a cityscape and make it look like a miniature. And that is caused by overall uniform contrast and clarity throughout the entire image no matter how far away elements and subjects appear in the scene.

Can you moderate this thread? Or have you been blocked from doing so?

Shooting wildlife at night in the dark at my local park became a challenge for me recently that I resorted to using my Pentax K200D DSLR's onboard flash just to see what I'ld get. I don't know if dragging the shutter was invoked but I did capture the Night Heron below at 1/80's. It was 8PM and close to dark. I kinda' like the rainbow-y red eye effect but that brightened background sky just made it look even weirder.

Then that creative person is just spit balling it leaving that person's decision making and intent unclear on what form of good taste is being defied. The finished work registers that message or it doesn't. When it doesn't, taste doesn't matter and neither does the creator. There has to be some intelligence conveyed in a created piece of work even if it defies intelligent thought and intent. Can someone smartly create something stupid? Comedians and satirists make a good living doing just that. I believe the OP is trying to express an opinion about the photographer's work in question as "Polished Mediocrity". He just might be having a hard time finding the right words to express it.

No one develops taste in the creative process. You either have it or you don't. The ones that are so good that they show they have taste took thousands of stinkers and culled through the best to present to the pubic. They act as their own curator (a very valuable skill). Some photographers are their own worst curator and they show it in what they present to the public in their galleries which may look like crap but that doesn't mean they don't have a unique vision going by what didn't make the cut sitting on their hard drive hidden from public view. A couple of weeks ago I browsed a LuLa off topic thread on "Show Us Your Best Photo" and all I could surmise from what was posted by even seasoned pro's pretty much supports my point they were all their own worst curator. There was no way those images were their best.