nick_marzinski

<p>Interesting interpretations, Duane. In terms of David's earlier question about when HDR is used, I generally use it for one of two reasons. </p>

<p>1.) When the dynamic range of the scene exceeds the range my camera is capable of capturing. Basically, if I'm getting either blown highlights or clipped shadows on my histogram no matter how I adjust my exposure, I'll consider bracketing to give me (at a minimum) an overexposed image with no clipped shadows and an underexposed image with no blown highlights. I shoot RAW and check my histogram frequently. If I can get a good histogram with a single exposure, I'll typically just use Lightroom and/or Photoshop and plugins to get the picture to how I want it to look and not bother with HDR, or</p>

<p>2.) I want to accentuate texture or grunge up my picture. In my experience, HDR is quite good at bringing out texture, and if I think that it would yield a better result than a single exposure then I'll either bracket or I'll use a single RAW exposure, create a few copies in LRwith varied exposure, and run those through Photomatix. Although I know a few photographers that bracket everything, I generally prefer to avoid the HDR process if I can because it's more time consuming than simple raw processing. But in the right circumstances, it's a useful tool to have.</p>

<p>Well...your first attempts at HDR look better than my first attempts at HDR. The issue with using an HDR program like Photomatix is that it's easy to get lulled into letting the program do all of the work and spit out the result and that's a far as you take it. What you generally end up with, in a lot of cases, is an HDR image with a bunch of faults (e.g., freakish saturation, ghosting, weird skies, color banding, bad noise, etc.) and it's one of the big reasons why HDR is such a...shall we say, contentious topic around photographers. This is where doing additional post work on the HDR image really pays off. Every HDR image that I produce ends up with a trip through Lightroom and Photoshop (and frequently a plugin like Topaz Adjust) to get it to where I want it to be, and the difference it makes is tremendous.</p>

<p>In terms of resources for learning how HDR works and how post processing can improve it, I'd highly recommend "The HDR Book" by RC Concepcion. Also, Blake Rudis over at everydayHDR.com posts tons of free tutorials about how to process HDR in Photomatix and post process what you get out of Photomatix. He's an excellent resource. Good luck!<br>

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<p>Well...your first attempts at HDR look better than my first attempts at HDR. The issue with using an HDR program like Photomatix is that it's easy to get lulled into letting the program do all of the work and spit out the result and that's a far as you take it. What you generally end up with, in a lot of cases, is an HDR image with a bunch of faults (e.g., freakish saturation, ghosting, weird skies, color banding, bad noise, etc.) and it's one of the big reasons why HDR is such a...shall we say, contentious topic around photographers. This is where doing additional post work on the HDR image really pays off. Every HDR image that I produce ends up with a trip through Lightroom and Photoshop (and frequently a plugin like Topaz Adjust) to get it to where I want it to be, and the difference it makes is tremendous.</p>

<p>In terms of resources for learning how HDR works and how post processing can improve it, I'd highly recommend "The HDR Book" by RC Concepcion. Also, Blake Rudis over at everydayHDR.com posts tons of free tutorials about how to process HDR in Photomatix and post process what you get out of Photomatix. He's an excellent resource. Good luck!<br>

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<p>Let's try that again...</p><div></div>

<p>Captured this about two weeks ago after a snowstorm. Yesterday, the temperature got up to 75 degrees F. Weird...</p>

<p>I don't live in California, so I think I'm safe from skin cancer. Thanks for the replies. Looks like nothing damaged, except for my pride. </p>

<p>Last weekend, I was setting up for a portrait shoot, and I was having trouble seeing if my Speedlite flash slaves were firing with the master. To check my 580 ex ii slave, I cupped my hand near the head of it (about an inch away) and fired the master. Clearly, this was not one of the more intelligent things I've ever done. The flash from the slave didn't hurt my hand, but got me to move it away in a hurry (and firmly resolve never to do that again). There was also a slight burning smell (whether from my hand or the flash, I'm not certain), though no smoke. I checked the flash's printed manual, and it doesn't have any warnings about minimum distance or covering the flash. Furthermore, the flash immediately recharged and has worked fine since (at various power levels and zoom lengths) with no smell whatsoever, so I think it's unlikely that it's been damaged. Nonetheless, that burning smell has me thinking. I'm just curious if this could have hurt the flash. </p>

<p>A few thoughts. First of all, as others have mentioned, the situation is going to dictate what technique you should use. If fill flash works, use it. If moving so the sun isn't backlighting your subject, let's say, do it. Finally, you can get a wider usable dynamic range with RAW images vs JPEGs, so I'd encourage you to consider shooting RAW and then using Adobe Camera Raw (included with Photoshop, which you mentioned you have) to adjust the dynamic range of your image. </p>

<p>HDR can work particularly well with landscapes, and I've used it often myself. That said, it's kind of a "nuclear option" so to speak, and I'd consider solving the issue in camera (with fill flash, etc.) before using HDR because of some of the issues with it. First of all, there is the potential to go overboard with the HDR treatment to end up with something that looks oversaturated, surreal or cartoony. The trick is to not overdo it. Secondly, in order to produce a nice HDR image (they do exist, I promise), you're committing yourself to a good deal of post-production work because the HDR software output (I use Photomatix myself, but CS5 or Nik are also good) will need some work. At the very least, a curve adjustment and noise reduction. Stuck in Customs or Everyday HDR are two good sites that have free tutorials that tell you what you need to pull off a good HDR shot if you consider going down that route. HDR can be a useful tool (but not the ONLY tool) to have in your arsenal.</p>

<p>Boredom. A macro lens. An open book. A digital ray of sunlight.</p><div></div>

<p>I also shoot with a T1i and for the first year or so was pretty ticked about color casts, clarity and noise. I've shot with a 7D and 40D before, and both are nice bodies and a step up from the T1i. My guess, though, is that you probably have all of the tools you need without upgrading your body. First off, as it seems you realize, shooting in RAW makes tons of difference. Yes, RAW images take up more space. Yes, you have to convert it before you can post/print/e-mail it (and after a shoot, that can be a bit daunting). That said, the amount of post process wiggle room you have with RAWs (in terms of boosting the dynamic range and white balance control) make it well worth it. I'm serious when I say that I wish I'd've started shooting RAW years before I did.</p>

<p>Secondly, post production is vital and Lightroom is a wonderful post production tool (and RAW converter and workflow manager). The noise reduction controls can, in particular, do a tremendous job at getting rid of luminance noise while preserving detail. The tone curve and clarity slider will boost contrast nicely. Certainly, all of these will work on jpegs, but you do have substantially more latitude with RAWs. Since I learned Lightroom (Scott Kelby's book was a great teacher), it's easy for me to look at an image now and quickly use the tools in LR to get take the image from what I started with to what I want. Some need only a little bit of work, others need a bit more. But now I do about 95% of my editing in Lightroom without ever having to move over to Photoshop.</p>

<p>Like you, I'd certainly love to upgrade to a 60D or 7D body. The AF is great, the rear dial is helpful in Manual mode, and they do have better sensors. That said, given the fact that I can now do pretty much everything I want using my T1i and LR, it's hard for me to justify the price. My $0.02.</p>

<p>Noticed this sunrise outside of my sister-in-law's back door at about 7 in the morning. Grabbed the camera and tripod. Took a bunch of bracketed exposures, and found 4 that I could make an HDR image out of without a ton of ghosting from the tree branches.</p><div></div>

<p>Haven't had a chance to break out the camera much this week. Alas. This was taken a few weeks ago. </p><div></div>

<p>You can google "Raw vs JPEG" and there's some pretty decent resources out there. Basically, with JPEG, your camera makes a lot of decisions at the time you capture the image (i.e., white balance, contrast, saturation), applies these "decisions" to your image and compresses it into a JPEG. You can, of course, still make edits to a JPEG, but every time you edit and re-save, the image is recompressed and you lose information. Furthermore, unless you're saving with a new file name, these changes are destructive (i.e., you can't undo them). If you desaturate a JPEG (for example) and save it, you can't recover the color. </p>

<p>With RAW, you're literally getting the pure sensor data without any compression. So you have a wider dynamic range (useable area between clipped shadows and blown highlights) available to you to work with plus the ability to control things like white balance, contrast and saturation. Instead of letting the camera make these decisions at the point of capture, you're making these decisions later on. Furthermore, all of the changes you make to your RAW image are saved as a sidecar xmp file, so they're non destructive. You can always undo a previous edit. Essentially, RAW is the digital equivalent of a film negative. Sounds great, but the downside to RAW is that they're much bigger than a JPEG (20MB or more per image vs. 5MB or so per JPEG), plus before you print or share or e-mail your image, you have to run it through a RAW processor such as Adobe Camera Raw or Canon's DPP product (which should have came on a CD with your camera). Personally, I shoot mostly RAW and develop the images in Adobe Lightroom.</p>

<p>Regarding HDR, a few good sites that come to mind are Trey Ratcliff's Stuck in Customs site and EverydayHDR.com. Both have free tutorials about how to generate an HDR image from bracketed exposures. I do a fair amount of HDR stuff using Photomatix, and I'd also recommend not only learning about how to capture and generate an HDR image, but also how to post-process your HDR image. The HDR Book by Rafael Concepcion is a good resource for that. Good luck!</p>

<p>Got a Canon 580EX II speedlite a few weeks ago, and spent some time playing around in my basement using it as a master flash with my 420EX. Here's one of the results.</p><div></div>

<p>Agree with the Canon 100mm f/2.8. I use the non-L macro mounted on a cropped frame (equivalent 160mm), and I love this lens. It is my first and (thus far) only macro lens, and I don't see the need for another one. For flowers this lens is tremendous. For insects, I'd prefer to get a little closer, but I can still get sharp, tight images with the 100mm. I have friends that are also happy with their 100mm f/2.8L IS lenses, but I (read: my wife) couldn't stomach the higher price. Not to mention, since most of my macro work is really controlled (tripoded camera, remote shutter), IS wasn't that important to me anyway. As others have said, depending on how close you need to get, you may be able to make do with a non-1:1 macro lens. However, if you're considering doing 1:1 macro photography, I'd also consider investing in a good tripod and a remote shutter release because of the narrow depth of field. </p>

<p>First attempt at Nighttime HDR. 7 exposures, ranging from -4 to +4 in (roughly) one stop increments. Key exposure at 30 sec, f/16, 100 ISO. Followed by a lot of layer masking in Photoshop.</p><div></div>

<p>I was actually about to ask the exact same question since I've been noticing the same thing. I use the Lightroom plugin (which exports temporary TIFF files from my RAW files) and align and don't crop in Photomatix. In my case, the HDR image is slightly offset but appears to be the same size. Possibly it's due to camera shake (camera was tripoded with mirror lockup and remote shutter release, though in my case I had to dial in additional exposures). Nice to have some suggestions about how to deal with this though.</p>

<p>Lots of great images this week, as usual. I was playing around with nighttime photography last night at the old Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee. Came across a beer garden that was completely empty and set up the tripod. HDR'ed it to capture more of the detail in the alcoves.</p><div></div>

<p>Possibly. I'm using PSE 8, and I'm considering upgrading for the content aware fill. Truthfully, there's a cheat to get layer masks in earlier versions of Elements (if you group an adjustment layer to an image layer, you can paint on the adjustment layer mask and it will mask the image it's grouped to), so although adding true layer masks is nice, it's not like we haven't been able to use them. Agree with several of the posters re: curves. I'd upgrade for a curves adjustment layer in a heartbeat, and it's frustrating that Adobe hasn't included them in Elements. </p>

<p>If I were you, I'd also seriously consider Lightroom. It's a bit more expensive than Elements (though I've been seeing it on sale recently). Lightroom has the full version of Adobe Camera Raw (with a crop tool, sharpener, excellent noise reducer, curve editor, and black-and-white converter), and now that I have it, I find that about 95% of my editing gets done in Lightroom with only periodic jumps over to Elements to handle something Lightroom can't do.</p>

<p>Here's my stab at the answers to your questions:<br>

1.) I don't bother adjusting the Auto Light Optimizer on my Canon 500D from the default when I shoot HDR. Considering you're combining multiple exposures taking at multiple exposure values, it probably doesn't make much of a difference whether it's off or on.</p>

<p>2.) By overexposure, are you saying that your highlights are blown? In that case, check the histogram on your bracketed shots. If your underexposed (darkest) shot has the histogram touching the right side of the graph (and you have blinkies on your image), your highlights are blown. You'll need to shoot a shot that's even more underexposed to capture detail in those highlights. Personally, I bracket on Av mode at two stops apart (-2,0,+2) and check the -2 and +2 shot. If I need additional underexposed shots, I go down to -4. If that's not your problem, you might be setting the brightness too high in your HDR software. Depending on the software you're using (I use Photomatix personally), there should be a brightness or white point slider. Adjusting these should cut down on your overexposure.</p>

<p>3.) Too "colorful": Getting a good saturation on your HDR images is tough, and the internet is littered with tons of grungy, over-saturated HDR images that make my eyes ache. I find that even if I dial the saturation down in Photomatix, I still often get color casts on parts of my image. For this, I either selectively desaturate parts of the composited HDR image in Lightroom using an adjustment brush or in Photoshop Elements using an adjustment layer with masking. I also find that applying an S-curve to all of my HDR images (in Lightroom) makes the contrast pop rather nicely, and burning and dodging is also very useful.</p>

<p>Finally, there's tons of good additional resources on the net about how to produce quality HDR images. I'd recommend either Trey Ratcliff's Stuck in Customs site or everydayhdr.com. </p><div></div>

<p>Some wonderful images this week. Robin, great church fence. Ervin, nice pic. I'm about 1/4 through LOTR myself. Rob, great DOF and splash of color from the flower. David, nice snowy frame on the canyon. Richard, excellent detail on the bird. Great horned owl from me this week. </p><div></div>

<p>You mentioned that you shoot a lot of RAW, and one of the drawbacks to PS Elements is that it comes with a stripped down version of Adobe Camera Raw. Have you considered something like Adobe Lightroom? The Develop module of that program is the full version of ACR that you'd find in CS5, and the Library/Import module makes cataloging your images and handling workflow fairly painless and is much more robust than the organizer in Elements. It's more expensive than Elements (though I've been seeing sales for it lately), and most of the edits that it does are global so you'll probably still want/need a pixel-level editor like Elements, but you may want to also consider it. I use both Elements and Lightroom, and probably 95% of my edits get done in Lightroom without ever needing to move over to Elements.</p>

<p>A common kestrel. I discovered that when telling friends and coworkers that I was going to spend the weekend shooting birds of prey, it was best to also inform them that the shooting would be done with a camera. </p><div></div>

<p>Patty, you don't need to worry about Lightroom screwing up your images, no matter what you do. Period. Think of it like this: when you edit in Lightroom, it doesn't actually make any changes to your images. All it does is saves the changes that you make to your images in a database (or as an xmp sidecar file), but not to the original image file. It's completely non-destructive. So you have your unchanged original image, with a set of Lightroom instructions that says what the edits are. You can crop, make selective edits, blow out your image until it's all white, desaturate it, whatever, the original is always there and you can always get back to it. There's a History panel on the left side of the screen in the Develop module that tracks all of your changes, allowing you to go back to any point in the process. It's only when you export your image out of Lightroom that it saves a new copy of the image (either as a TIFF or JPEG) with the "instructions" applied to it. Your original image file is still there and not changed. </p>

<p>Regarding virtual copies, I use them when I want to have multiple versions of a single image. So, for example, let's say that I want one copy in color and one copy in black and white. When you create a virtual copy, you're not copying the image, you're only creating a new, second set of instructions that gets applied to the original image. So with a virtual copy, it looks like two images in the filmstrip, but technically it's not. It's really one image with two sets of instructions: One set that leaves the image in color, another that converts it to black and white. Again, the original image file is never changed and the edits are only applied to a copy of the image when you export. That's the beauty of Lightroom, you can experiment as much as you want, but you can always undo the changes and get back to the original image. </p>

<p>When I import into Lightroom, every photo gets copied to my main HD (which is organized by date folders), backed up to an external drive with an identical file structure, has a basic import preset applied (just a contrast, clarity boost that I use on 95% of my images), and gets keyworded. Then I often rely on smart collections. So, for example, I have a Macro smart collection. Every photo that gets tagged with "Macro" as a keyword automatically gets added to that collection. If I'm coming from a shoot, I'll do a quick preview of the photos in the Library module, pick the best ones ("P" on the keyboard), reject the lousy shots ("X"), delete the rejects (Cntrl+ backspace), and set up a new Collection and move all of the picks into that collection. This may whittle a 250 image import, let's say, into about 20-50 images I really care about. From that point, I move into the Develop module and edit only the 20-50 images in the Collection. In terms of post-editing, I set my white balance (I shoot RAW and I often auto white balance in camera), highlights(Exposure, Recovery sliders) and shadows (Blacks slider). From that point on, it depends on the image. Lightroom isn't the cure all for bad images, but for about 95% of what I shoot, I can finesse to done in Lightroom without ever needing to go over to Photoshop.</p>

<p>In terms of figuring your way through Lightroom/post processing, I'd highly recommend Scott Kelby's Lightroom 3 for Digital Photographers book. He lays pretty much everything out in that book--how to organize, how to process, when to move your image to Photoshop, how to use the print layouts, etc. At the end, he gives examples on how images can be fixed. It's generally well written, and well worth it.</p>