Posts tagged ‘HDR’
Probably not what you were expecting based on the title. The Pepsi Center, here in Denver, is affectionately known as the ‘The Can’ by locals. It hosts the Avalanche, Mammoth, and Nuggets. It has also provided the stage from many a concert. Red Rocks is still the better venue for concerts. However, if you are a stadium rock band, the ‘The Can’ is where it’s at. Well, unless you are U2, then you have to look at 80,000 person arenas….not too many bands like that left.
As you have noticed lately, I am pretty big on using a Nikon 45mm PC-E lens. I don’t really use it for its indented purpose, which is to increase depth of field, and help reduce converging lines in pictures of tall things. I will be going into more detail when my review of the lens hits the blog next Sunday. As for this image, I wanted to test the Perspective Correction feature of the lens. With any other lens, because you would have had to point the camera up at the building, you would have seen the straight lines getting closer towards the top of the photo. Not with the Nikon 45mm PC-E lens! You simply keep the camera (film/sensor plane) parallel with the building and raise (shift) the lens up. It is hard to visualize, but the difference is incredible to witness. That is only one of its tricks. It is a finely tuned, razor sharp, optical engineering wonder!
An astronaut with a day off from space walks, research, and mission tasks might want to take a break from the daily regiment of Tang to enjoy a nice pinot or cab with their protein paste. A quick trip to the wine cellar module on the International Space Station could provide such luxuries to our orbiting scientists. Although currently not available, or scheduled for production, a wine cellar would be a nice addition to the space based bed and breakfast. However, if there were such a thing, I believe this might be the wine cellar they would visit.
As a bit of an impressionist I commonly take creative liberties to realize my vision. Feel free to watch the video below to see how I use Photomatix 3.2 and a couple of NIK filters to build a wine cellar suitable for international space travel.
Capture Notes:
Nikon D300
Nikkor 16-85 VRII
Gitzo Traveler
Markin Q3T ball head
Aperture: f/16.0
Focal Length: 16 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Processing Notes:
Capture (7 images)
NX2 (Raw Conversion)
Photomatix (HDR/Tonemapping)
NIK Define 2.0 (Noise reduction)
Photoshop (Curves adjustment – global contrast/color correction)
Nik Color EFX Pro (Glamour glow – desaturate)
NIK Color EFX Pro (Tonal Contrast)
Photoshop (size for web)
NIK Sharpener (Display adaptive 35% selectively applied to the wine bottles)
LightAsMagic.com
…or, if you have time, you can just watch the video (length: about 10mins).
If you are interested in purchasing any of the NIK Tools, make sure you use the coupon code LIGHTASMAGIC and receive a 15% discount on their products.
To find out more about Photomatix 3.2 visit HDRSoft’s website at:
You can use the coupon code LIGHTASMAGIC to receive a 15% discount on Photomatix
As you might know by now, my mother-in-law loves images of doors. She asked me to photograph one last weekend when we were visiting the Stanley Hotel. This might be one of the more famous (infamous) doors I have ever had the opportunity to photograph. It is the door to room 217. The great thing about being an independent, impressionistic photographer, I have the freedom to make the door as creepy as Kubrick did.
Capture Notes:
Nikon D300
Nikkor 17-35 2.8 AFS
Gitzo Traveler
Markins Q3T
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 17 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Processing Notes:
Capture (5 Images)
Photomatix (Raw Conversion, HDR, Tonemapping)
Nik Color EFX Pro (Bleach Bypass – selective touch of desaturation excluded the door)
Nik Color EFX Pro (Tonal Contrast – selective boost saturation included only the door)
Nik Define 2.0 (Automatic entire image)
Photoshop (Curves adjustment global)
Nik Color EFX Pro (Vignette big-n-soft)
Sized for web
Nik Sharpen (Display 30% adaptive selective to the door)
LightAsMagic.com
Sometimes you stumble upon a collection of colors and lines that you can’t help but fill your viewfinder with. After a scheduled photo-walk of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, I was headed back to the car when this scene presented itself to me. I used a longer focal length to try and draw the compositional elements closer together. The brass star was pure luck.
Nikon D300
Nikkor 16-85 VRII
Gitzo Traveler
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 70 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Processing Notes:
Capture (7 images)
Photomatix (HDR/Tonemapping)
Nik Define (Automatic entire image)
Photoshop (Curves adjustment global)
Nik Color Efx Pro (Tonal Contrast selectively applied to buildings and stairs)
Sized for web
LightAsMagic.com
A photographer friend of mine, whose images you can see over on flickr, likes to make images of landscapes within landscapes. He will find a small patch of grass and flowers, or an interesting rock amidst a much grander scene. He calls these images ‘intimate landscapes’. I really like the idea. He tells me that I am an ‘intimate urbanscape’ photographer. I am pretty sure it is images like this that compels him believe that.
Nikon D300
Nikkor 35mm 1.8 DX
Gitzo Traveler
Aperture: f/4.0
Focal Length: 35 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Processing Notes:
Capture (7 images)
Photomatix (HDR/Tonemapping)
Photoshop (Curves Adjustment)
Nik Color Efx Pro (Bleach Bypass)
Nik Color Efx Pro (Vignette)
LightAsMagic.com
Red Rocks Amphitheater is just down the hill from my house, so I visit it quite a bit. It’s my personal Landscape photography training ground. Today the light was barely gracing the tops of the rocks and I wanted to try a couple new techniques in post. I decided to find a reasonably interesting foreground object and go for it.
A couple readers have asked for a quick “101″ lesson regarding HDR images and the tools used to create them. I am still working on more substantial content, but until it is finished, I will outline a basic example here.
Here are three images from the seven bracketed images I captured (+3,+2,+1,0,-1,-2,-3) to create the above photo. Obviously one is exposed for the rock and sky, the other is exposed for the cactus, the middle one is what the camera meter decided was a good average of the light in the scene. However, no one image has an exposure that is adequate for both foreground and background. That is where Photomatix Exposure Fusion comes in. You might be able to achieve a balanced exposure outside of software, but it would require either filters or flash, maybe both. But if you are traveling light, then this might be the way to go for you? You can read more about Photomatix here:
http://www.hdrsoft.com/
Foreground exposure +3 on the meter
Metered
Background exposure -3 on the meter
Processing: Caputre (7 Images) -> Import -> RAW Conversion to .tiff (applying NX2 landscape picture control) -> Photomatix (Exposure Fusion attenuated) -> NoiseWare -> Photoshop (contrast/saturation boost, sharpened) -> flickr
Tip: Even if the weather is nice, if you are planning on making some image near cactus, make sure you bring something other than your flip flops.
Less Elvis, originally uploaded by LightAsMagic.
While attending the National Geographic Traveler photography workshop, I engaged in a conversation with Dan Westergren (Nat Geo Traveler senior photo editor) regarding HDR. He jokingly described it as the Velvet Elvis of photography. A compliment in some circles I’m sure. He was open to the discussion and I learned quite a bit from him over the weekend. During the photo review session I plotted against Dan and his ‘old school’ beliefs. I knew Dan wasn’t going to be swayed into publishing HDR images in the next issue of Traveler, but I did think I would get the rest of the class on my side…….and maybe that would convince him. The excitement grew as my straight images were being reviewed. Soon, the class would witness the power of HDR and Dan would have to succumb to the will of the people! Pow, it hit the screen like $#!+ hits the fan!!! What was this monstrosity. On the projector it looked nothing like it did the night before while I was processing it. I knew I shouldn’t have helped my wife finish that lemon drop martini at dinner. Halos, saturation, cartoony…it was all wrong. I still think the class dug it. Probably because it was so foreign, I mean dramatic. But Dan wasn’t going to have any of it. Although my plan failed, Dan was still a good sport about the whole thing. I reprocessed the image during lunch and re-presented it. Although Dan admitted he was impressed with it I wouldn’t get your hopes up, I doubt any HDR will be making its way into future issues of Traveler. Unless of course, Bob has something to say about it!
This image is the reprocessed image. I like it much better than the Velvet Elvis.
9 Images > NX2 (Raw conversion) > Photomatix 3.2 (Exposure Fusion) > Photoshop (lens flare correction, saturation bump, contrast bump, sharpen) > Blog
Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: Tokina 11-16
Filter: Nikon CPII
Tripod: Gitzo
Head: Markins Q3T
Room With A View, originally uploaded by LightAsMagic.
While preping for a 14er (14,000ft peak for those of you who don’t live in Colorado) I was trying to imagine what the view would be like and what gear I should bring. When climbing a 14er, gear and weight decisions take on new meaning. I had discussed this with my wife and she quickly reminded me that 14ers are just “boulder fields with panoramic views”. Very true. I decided to take a very friendly summit friendly kit: a wide light lens (Tokina 11-16 2.8) and my GT1541T. I am glad I did. Not because of the summit, it was far too windy to shoot, but because of the abandoned mine along the way. It is the journey and not the destination, right? Heck of view these folks had. If you are interested this is a five exposure (-2 through +2) HDR image taken directly from the Photomatix 3.2 output.
Interesting HDR tip: Becuase of the dynamic range of the exposure I had to spot meter for the sky, then manually set the exposure for about 3ish stops below the spot metered exposure. This allowed me to capture the inside of the cabin. I knew I could brighten the sky in post-production if necessary. Apereture priority ended up with exposures that were still underexposing the interior walls. Lesson learned. In the future, for efficencey sake, it might just be easier to use exposure compensation. Either way I was happy with the hike and the image.
The 14er in question is Mount Sherman.
Weather Report, originally uploaded by LightAsMagic.
I went out shooting in the Pawnee Grasslands looking for a windmill, an old shed, or a stagecoach. Interesteingly I stumbled upon this abandonded weather radar station. I decided to try my had at an HDR image. Once I processed it I was hooked. I think hooked might be an understatement. The analogy might not hold up, but in my book HDR is to photogrpahy what the Shamwow is to wet cleanup.
To learn more about HDR I would start with Trey Ratcliffs travel blog: http://www.stuckincustoms.com.
