Good on you Rocco, you've exposed your moon beautifully!
@ Bryan, I like the bright window, it makes the room look sunny and inviting. It sells the room.
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Good on you Rocco, you've exposed your moon beautifully!
@ Bryan, I like the bright window, it makes the room look sunny and inviting. It sells the room.
Good on you Rocco, you've exposed your moon beautifully!
@ Bryan, I like the bright window, it makes the room look sunny and inviting. It sells the room.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6067/...2756e817_z.jpg
Took this the other morning, while taking an early morning stroll with the Missus before breakfast. (A few compositional rules broken here but I think it still works).
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Center exposure out of camera.
This was my first attempt at HDR. I recently came back from my honeymoon in Iceland. Every day was cloudy so HDR became very useful.
Enjoy
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This is another one. Cow in front of Mt Eyjafjallajokull
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@freelance
Have you ever tried ReLight by oloneo? Not for sure if it would help you or not. You take one shot with the ambient where you want it along with separate shot for each light source. Once in post, adjust each light individually until you get the desired shot.
No have not tried it but will look into it. Thanks for the recommendation.
-Looked into the software and all I can say wow! That would seem like it could be very useful in certain situations that I come across. I'll send it to one of the IT/software guys in Australia and see what he thinks. They may buy it for me if they see that it is something that could help me out.
Man, that ReLight software looks really cool. May have to at least download the free beta. Some of the things in the short demo video are exactly what I want to be able to do with some of my interior shots.
It
Found it.
m.youtube.com
I
At 150.00 its a little pricey. Layers in photoshop can give similar results but just not as user friendly by moving sliders. One would also have to take a lot more pictures. One with all the lights off and then a series with each light on one at time. When I shoot a hotel I come out of there with 300 to 500 images with still and VR sets. With time I
Everyone needs a write-off;)
I thought I'd take my own advice and post my before photos that show what I was working from. Included the perspective correction image that shows the areas that I'm always shorted and I have to spend a lot of extra time redrawing these areas. That's where I am hoping that the 14mm Rokinon will outshine the 16-35mm canon plus the improvement in edge to edge corner sharpness. The rooms are always very dark and for the bonus I hadn't bought a new flash yet. The flash shot up into the ceiling really helps to brighten up the areas closest to the camera where the natural light from the window really fades. The rooms are my least favorite and I always dread them.
[View:http://community.the-digital-picture...neric/utility/http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6063/...f877f307_z.jpg finished image by freelanceshots, on Flickr:550:0]
[View:http://community.the-digital-picture...neric/utility/http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6209/...531071a1_z.jpg crop corners perspec correct by freelanceshots, on Flickr:550:0]
[View:http://community.the-digital-picture...neric/utility/http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6068/...4b3beab7_z.jpg original image by freelanceshots, on Flickr:550:0]
Bryan I think having the image well lit (top image) helps to give the room more size. But at the same time the gradient lighting of the initial image has a little bit of mood and intrigue. However it is too dark to be left that way because it is a little claustrophobic and detail is lost in the shadows. Therefore for me, and my opinion only, I would like to see something in between. This is being picky because the photo is near perfect, but I like the window to be a little over exposed, giving a sunny feel, and yet a little bit of mood - especially around the bed area. This gives more depth.
It
That was an above and beyond response. Thanks for taking the time to do that. I can see what your saying where a little more mood can go a long way. With my images I am really supposed to get them close to where the company wants them and then they tweak them the rest of the way depending on what the client actually wants to see. Doing these rooms gets really tough because there's never enough space, they all have a big bright window directly in front of you, the room is dark and then lite with three or four lamps. Also no matter how hard the folks try to get the beds right they never come close to looking really super nice. I mean when I look at them before I take the images you can't notice all the wrinkles but it sure as heck shows up in the picture and I explain that in detail. Before I even start shooting I have a walk a round with the GM and the head house keeper and go over everything I need but its really tough to get a perfect picture. They don't pay me enough to capture a near perfect room where its more about moving fast but trying to keep the quality level high. The top image could probably be tweaked to give it that more mood type lighting but I'm burnt out so that about all I can do.
I am looking forward to getting the new lens and seeing if it adds to my images. First my contract company needs to come up with more steady work and then I can look at adding some additional toys maybe for future work.
One more for good measure:
[View:http://community.the-digital-picture...neric/utility/http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6204/...2da90a24_z.jpg tweaked finished image by freelanceshots, on Flickr:550:0]
Bryan -
As one of your peers, I totally understand and relate to your frustrations (not enough time and budget to get the perfect shot). William
Awww, that was nice of you to say. Thanks for the kind words!
Bryan in order to stay competitive in this business you need not only to be a great photographer but also a keen businessman. And a big part of being a businessman is knowing where the boundaries are and when to know when the job is finished. In this regard I think you are hitting the mark. Your quality is very high and you are getting the correct balance between your constraints and the desired quality. One only needs to look at your images to tell that you are a perfectionist and without a doubt your clients are getting plenty of bang for their buck.
Most clients probably wouldn't notice a few wrinkles in a bed but some would. What you could do, maybe, is provide a checklist for them to consider while preparing a room for a photo shoot. Even an example photo with a red circle around common faults might be helpful for them. This wouldn't make your job any harder but the fussy clients might really appreciate a few tips on how to get the most out of their images.
I like your re-edit BWT!
Thanks for your additional information William. In my walk through I go into great detail with the G.M. and head house keeper on all the essential items that make for better photography. The first and second room usually look nice but then they usually go down hill from there. I try and touchup the beds a little but with the pattern in the sheets and comforters it gets really tough and to time consuming to remove or lessen all the imperfections. Now if I was only doing a few rooms for the entire project where I was getting paid 3,000 to 5,000 dollars for the job I would be required to carry a steamer, hire someone to take care of the beds specifically and do test shots and then study them to find the problem areas. As for now everyone's happy, the deadlines are met and I collect a marginal check.
Someone needs to make software like the portrait professional for skin that will take wrinkles out of fabric. Maybe they do and that's what the parent company uses to clean up our results.
Sounds like my job. You can only put your efforts where they
Here
I will check out the link that you provided. Thanks again for your time and effort with your replies.
Your pictures are fabulous and inspire me to try out HDR.
I was turned on to Trey Ratcliff by D-Town TV. He is an HDR GURU and has has a free tutorial on Photomatix Pro which he endorses. I am still in the prehistoric ages when it comes to PP and use DPP. Can you use the Photomatrix software with this program or would I need to invest in Photoshop? Any other suggestions are welcome too.
Thanks,
Brett
A couple of weeks ago, I climbed Mt Marcy (highest point in New York) at
night to watch the sunrise. Here are some of the HDR results:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-k..._8_9_fused.JPG
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E...tonemapped.JPG
You certainly can Brett, in fact Photomatix suggests processing from JPGs, which makes things easy. You just want to output your varied exposure images as JPG files from DPP and then open them up in Photomatix and let it work its magic.
Those of you who dabble in HDR and are curious about the different software available, might be interested in this:
http://darwinwiggett.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/the-weekly-photo-august-29-2011/
This is where I live. I'm not Australian but I think this is a pretty cool place to live.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6203/...100df832_b.jpg
WOW that
Here's another one from this set
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6195/...8e2b9041_z.jpg
William those are both great shots mate. I particularly like the tones in the second image.
One thing I
Hmm...I'm not sure what happened there Ben. I'm thinking it was actually something to do with the noise software. I had it on full strength and it can do some strange things sometimes when it gets confused about what's supposed to be noise and what's supposed to be detail. That little black blob at the end of the bridge is a tree. Here the software recognised this as a detail area and the white hand rails in this zone were left with detail but on either side they got a bit blurred (you have to zoom in to %100 to see this). Similarly there's something funky going on between those pylons as you've noticed. See how they are blurry in between, that's not right, there should be detail in there. And I think it is the noise software that did this. If it was the HDR software then I'd expect halos around the trees on the horizon, around the white hand rails and around the nearest grass clump in the foreground. I'm not emphatic about this, you could be right.
Personally I find halos really displeasing, any tips to remove them are very welcome. I like your suggestion and will definitely give this a go - thanks!
It's good to show these images to people with such a keen eye and some helpful knowledge on ways to improve. Your feedback is invaluable because it helps everyone, not just the person who took the shot.
I'm still not very good at this but I think this turned out ok. It's the subway construction site near where I live. Composed from 3 shots.
Attachment 252
7D + Samyang 8mm Fisheye
EDIT: If you want to see the full size version click the link to my blog in the signature.
@qwRad: It looks great to me. Like the sky and the different colored lights. Well balanced and realistic looking. Well done!
Damian
+1. Looks nice, and I can see myself standing there watching the work.
Thanks for the feedback. I was aiming for the realistic look and really liked the blue lights that came in from the right. One thing I wasn't able to get right in my opinion was the neon sign of the hotel on the left. Have to check out some tutorials to see how I can improve it.
Good shot, neon is tricky for me as well. Usually I expose one frame in the set for the neon and then just go back to that shot and then clone it back into the HDR version. Though in doing this, if you have any blooming of the light in your HDR version, you will have some extra work blending the intensity to get it to look right.
Really like this one. The pink tones really sets up a nice lookQuote:
Originally Posted by William
Thanks for getting this thread back up Sampsa;) Great shot! On your blog it looks even more impressive. I really like the extreme wide angle in this shot, there's still a lot of things to watch to. Also I like the different tones of light coming from the construction lights. Nice one!:DQuote:
Originally Posted by qwRad
nice job, qw, that's a very good example of the 'good' style of HDR, nice detail in the lights and shadows, and colours in the equipment and such.
I still don't have a job yet, but there's a lot going around in the centre of australia in the mines, they pay a hell of a lot of money but I'd rather not go work there because of the heat and dust and conditions etc, but one thing that would convince me would be the possibility to get a shot like that of a minesite (and the ability to afford a 1DX+TS-E24 with a week or two's paycheque would be nice too).
ps, where in Finland is there a subway? (or going to be?).
Meanwhile, this one i've been working on solidly for days, I may have shared an earlier iteration in another thread, it was a +/- 1/3EV shot I took in Leiden in January (yes, good weather in NL in January).
First I grabbed the raw-processed-to-jpg files, stitched them to a .exr using Hugin, then tonemapped using Luminance HDR (which may have been what I shared elsewhere). For my workflow, I start by experimenting with settings at a small size, like 512px wide, they take less than a minute to tonemap. Once i've got it nearly down, i'll tonemap a fullsize 18MP version, which takes 20 minutes or so. After a few of them (and others using the same method), I came across the fact that using Hugin is no good, it boosts the darkest frame to incredible-noise-levels and pastes it in with the other frames, so all the darkest spots end up looking purple and full of noise. So never again using Hugin for creating .exr files.
So now I use Luminance to create as well as tonemap, I started by reading in the .cr2 raw-files and tone-mapping from there. after a few small ones I started on the large 18MP 20-minute versions again. But then you see things that don't show up at smaller size, like colours of small sections or noise coming in. So I tonemapped 33 different versions with different combinations of gamma/contrast/saturation ('detail' I left at 1, any higher makes for noise and weird weird ghosting-shadows).
Then I decided that the noise was still too high, this time in the sky, even shrunk to 1MP files they had white speckles everywhere. So I went back to DPP, raw-processed-to-jpg again, but this time with a high-noise reduction, like 3:4 (for a 7D iso100 shot). The difference in the jpgs is huge, no detail in the bricks on the church wall or the big windows either. But still, I mashed them in Luminance and tonemapped, and after 11 20-minute tonemaps, I still wasn't happy.
So this morning, I went back to one of the 33 .cr2-mashed-tonemapped files, opened it in GIMP, did a fuzzy select on the sky by colour, after a few minutes learning how to use the tool, I applied some Gaussian Blur to just the sky. I'm still not sure if i'm 100% happy, the tonemapping algorithm does weird things like making the bottom-right corner almost black, but this is good enough until I get bored enough again.
But still, at least i've learned an absolute heap about using these programs in the process, I'm trying to convince myself that next time it won't be so bad...
Meanwhile, including the .exr files, and all the tone-mapped files saved at 100% quality PNG (all ~60mb each), I have 50 files totalling 3.2GB just for this one photo (not counting the original raw/jpg files). No wonder my 500GB backup drives are totally full.
So anyway, this is as good as this shot is getting for now:
Attachment 256
Thanks Dr Croubie. Working in a mine sounds very interesting (ranks in the same category of 'cool' high-pay jobs as working on an offshore oil platform in my book) and photographing one would be even cooler :)
There is a subway in Helsinki (the capital of Finland), it's called metro here. It's very simple compared to most cities, basically just a single line from west to east that splits to two at the eastern end. You can see it in google maps with the transit option selected: here (the stops are marked with blue M letters). They are now expanding the 'network' to west to the neighboring city of Espoo where I live. You can read more about the project on their site if you are interested.
Sounds like you can soon write a nice guide about doing HDR on Linux with all your newly found knowledge. :) The photo is looking good also. I would love to see a higher resolution version to check out more of the details!
I love this thread - some great pics on here.
Just a quick question regarding HDR.
I see that some people bracket the images whilst others do different time exposures.
Just wondering what the advantages / disadvantages are of each ( if there are any)???