Very High Dynamic Range Photography

Transcription

1 Very High Dynamic Range Photography Night photography with Moons & Lights November 24, 2917 Guy Huntley The Complete Photographer Meetup

2 The Preprocessing & The Postprocessing Manual Bracketing Camera Automatic Exposure Bracketing Phone / Pad / Computer DSLR Controllers Helicon Remote CamRanger Promote Control Lightroom Photoshop Nik HDR Efex Pro EasyHDR PhotomatixPro Corel Phaintshop Pro Aurora HDR HDR Expose 3

3 Preprocessing: Manual Expoosure Bracketing This is the bare bones, free standby When all else fails, set the exposure one image at a time MUST use a tripod! Remote shutter cable or 2 second delay for long exposures

4 Manual Exposure Bracketing Put your camera into A mode (aperture priority mode). You will do the actual shoot in M mode, but the A mode allows you to easily measure the right shutter speeds for your scene. Choose the right aperture. This depends on the lighting of the scene and on the depth of field you are trying to accomplish. Choose the lowest possible ISO sensitivity to avoid noise in your photos. Put your camera into single-point focus mode. This lets you manually select the point that your camera should use to focus and to measure the exposure. Set your focus. You can use the autofocus to get your main subject in focus. Switch the AF off once that s done. Otherwise, your camera may decide to change the focus in the middle of the MEB series which would require you to start from scratch. Put your camera into spot metering mode. In this mode, only a small region around the active focus point is used to measure the exposure. Spot meter the highlights then the shadows. This will set the range

5 In-camera Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) Much faster for supported brackets (3, 5, 7, 9, or 11 brackets) Easily hand held for high speed daylight images Falls back to semi-manual for Very High Dynamic Range images when multiple sets of exposures are required. A tripod is required for multiple sets

6 Link to Original In-camera AEB

7 In-camera AEB - Notes The above chart assumes a f / 5.6 lens which everyone has and 30 seconds or less exposure so we don t go into the dreaded Bulb Mode. The 30 second shadows dictate ISO Lower ISO solutions: Fast Glass or Darker Shadows F / 2.8 lens is 2 EV (stops) faster. That s ISO 400 or 7.5 seconds On the other hand, go deeper into the shadows with ISO 400 At Deerfield a lens in 16-35mm FF or 10-22mm APS-c is ideal. The f / 1.4 lenses have a 4 EV (stop) improvement. That s down to ISO 100 with reasonable shadow details There are several > $500 24mm & 35mm prime lenses available

8 In phone Camera Apps There are lots of them for Droids & iphones An example is DSLR Controller:

9 DSLR Controller

10 Features of this controller Features Features include but are not limited to: - HDR/Auto Exposure Bracketing - Focus Bracketing (incl. HDR) - Timelapse (incl. HDR) - Bulb capture - Live View - Auto Focus (tap Live View) - Manual focus adjustments (in AF mode) - Histogram - Zoom control - Grid and aspect ratio overlay - Continuous capture - Image review (+ follow shot, gallery) - Image filters (peaking, contrast, channel mask, grayscale, 4 modes/filter) - Video recording - Focus A-B - Mirror Lockup support - Wi-Fi Passthrough - Extensive modification of settings -- Shutter speed -- Aperture -- ExpComp and Bracket -- ISO speed -- Auto-Focus Mode -- Focus and Zoom area (tap-and-hold Live View) -- Picture Style -- Drive Mode -- White Balance -- Color Temperature -- Auto-Lighting Optimizer -- Metering Mode -- Image and video quality and format

11 Helicon Remote from Helicon Soft Apps for phones, pads, laptops, and computers to control your camera $40 to $78 Tethered capture of images and video - shoot remotely to automate the whole process Focus bracketing Exposure bracketing Time lapse Burst shooting Burst focus bracketing Helicon Remote allows to use any combination of focus, exposure bracketing and time lapse shooting. Helicon Remote also allows wi-fi tethered shooting

12 Camranger $300 for Hardware. Apps for phones & Computers are Free CamRanger is a stand-alone device that connects to select Canon or Nikon DLSR cameras with a USB cable. It creates its own WiFi network to connect to. Live View Wirelessly stream live view from the camera to the device Double tap to increase magnification Single tap to focus on an area or make incremental focus adjustments Perform automatic focus stacking Frame rate of about 8 18 fps depending on the camera Take and View Pictures Wirelessly capture images or trigger from the camera Thumbnails automatically appear on the top of the screen after taking a picture Tap a thumbnail to view the image and its associated meta-data Images are always saved to the camera card and optionally downloaded to the device (ipad, iphone, ipod Touch, Android, or Mac or Windows computer) Optionally select to have images automatically display on the device Intervalometer and Bulb Configure as an intervalometer to take time lapse pictures Supports bulb mode with typical start-stop control and by using custom defined shutter lengths No need for your device to remain connected after starting Click to learn more about the intervalometer and bulb features HDR / Advanced Bracketing Configure CamRanger to take a series of pictures automatically varying Shutter Speed, Aperture, or ISO Images can then be post-processed with 3rd party software Click to learn more about the HDR/Advanced Bracketing features Macro Photography Provides very precise focusing control Great for situations requiring awkward camera placements Perform automatic focus stacking to enhance depth of field (post processing with 3rd party software required) Click to learn more about the CamRanger macro photography features

13 Promote Control $329 base; $366 with Carrying Case & Adaptor HDR Bracketing Promote Control shoots automatic brackets of up to 45 images, with up to 9.0 EV step between shots. It can even automatically step into Bulb for night-time HDR! Exposures from 1/8000 sec up to hours Mirror Lock-up support Time-Lapse Want to run a Time-Lapse? No problem. Want a Time-Lapse HDR? That's easy! Optional start delay Exposures can be set on camera or on the Promote Time-lapse single shots or whole HDR brackets! Focus Stacking Ingredients: one Canon DSLR, one Promote Control, lots of creativity. You are the chef! Three focus step sizes: Small, Medium and Large Shoot single exposures or HDR brackets Set your start and end points, and Promote will do the rest!

14 Postprocessing: Lightroom HDR Photo merge Adobe Photography for $9.99 / Mo Now three plans: Lightroom CC plan with 1 TB of cloud storage for serious phone photography Photography plan with LF Classic, LR CC, and Photoshop with 20GB cloud storage Photography plan with t TB of cloud storage for $19.99 / mo The plain old Photography plan is the one I have. The HDR is OKay for plain daytime images, not so good for complicated images Output is a DNG Raw file. The deghosting scheme works but touchup may be required. No Batch capability

15 Photoshop High Dynamic Range Images Included in the Photoshop plan Good to create 32 bit files tone mapping is improved but not great deghosting can be a challenge No batch capability Can edit and use 32bit files created in any application! Layers and many of the blend modes, filters. And tools can be used to edit 32bit files for subsequent tone mapping in photoshop or other tone mapping applications

16 Nik HDR EfexPro One of the best, still free from DXO The NIK upoint technology works on the 32bit image to enhance all the image! Can make 32bit files from Bridge, Lightroom, or use 32 bit files in Photoshop The deghosting scheme is pretty effective The Nik collection is a steal that should be added to everyone s toolset.

17 EasyHDR Lists for $39 for the Home Edition It is truly easy and produces high quality, realistic results A plugin for Lightroom is available and installed on request Good ghost removal capability Batch processing mode

18 PhotomatixPro List $99 Save 15% with either DanielHancock, LewisKemper, or LukeZemePhotography This is the HDR elephant in the room all others are compared to Lots of options, lots or presets Has a batch mode and drag & Drop capabilities Use a Paint Brush for localized adjustments Blend selective originals in with or without using a paint brush

19 Corel Paintshop Pro 2018 $99 A combination of Photoshop, Lightroom, and other stylisation plugins in one suite Good HDR tools including ghost removal Definitely should be considered by beginners on a budget

20 Aurora HDR $99-15% with lukezeme code This is the new boy on the block with a lot of marketing Developed on Macs for the last year to two so should be mature on macs Released for windows late September. It is not mature on windows. Too many missing or broken features The next windows release should be really good!