preDawn Warm & Cool

I'm up in FNQ (Far north Queensland) enjoyng it, So little time and no reason to blog (otherthan its overcast & raining). before I travelled north I wtshe some of the sessions on B&H's recent Optix conference, and Stop motion phtography caught my interest. There was a lngthy list of gear (its was B&H running it after all) and I though I've gott most of that, perhaps I need to read up a bit about the intervalometer, perhaps not.

I have a great view to the east out over the coral sea, So it was back to early morning getting up. At least its not cold. In case you've never tried it, a dark to light stop motion is a challenge, But I like a challenge.

The earlt starts can be rewarded in other ways. Even when They are just glimpses.

Big Celebration

A brand new day :: Kimberley Coast

Its an important day my beloved HP Spectre has come home with a new screen (sadly the previous screen got cracked in my previous travels). I must admit I had become very used to tablet mode and speediness of the little computer with not a lot on it. Welcome home my little friend.

Sunrise

Mucking around in boats :: Yellow Dawn

Red Sky in the morning

I must admit I’m normally still snuggling in a warm bed at this time of the morning, and it has been a very cold spell. However I was up and awake early today and able to capture the first light of dawn. Giving me a great opportunity to compare my “girls” (the three current mistresses, aka photo managers/editors, I’m using rather than picasa/google photos) as I would normally edit/tweak them. The Photo on the right is the original unedited Jpeg. The photos below are edited by AfterShot , Lightroom  and Perfect Photo Suite 9. These three systems render my .pef file (Pentax’s RAW format) differently but their RAW file renders all look very flat compared with the jpeg. I liked the dark silhouette of the trees, so I have left the images very low key and just just concentrated of adding a little extra contrast and vibrance.I also straighten and cropped each version. In the edge they all look somewhat similar, supporting the observation that it probably doesn’t matter a lot which software you use as long as it does what you want.

AfterShot Pro 2, which has become my first stop on my laptop. In this case I have just click on Perfect Clear and lifted the vibrance slider a little. With a straightening and crop to finish. All over in seconds
Lightroom 4.4, was a little more considered and all done in the development module, lifting clarity (rather than contrast) and a little vibrance (not saturation) then straightening and crop.

Perfect Photo Suite 9, was a actually my second port of call but I have left it till last as it seems to match my memory of the moment best. I started in Perfect enhanced (which is where cropping and straightening are normally undertaken. Whilst there I couldn’t resist using their wonderful content aware magic  perfect eraser to remove the two light poles (which would have bee a very time consuming task with a cloning tool on the second post behind the tree). I also finished with perfect effects, a natural Dynamic Contrast, A fall enhancer Colour Enhancer bought back to 60% layer opacity and a soft darker vignette

Sunrise Palm Cove

MDR rather than true HDR

I’m using the abbreviation MDR to mean Maximum Dynamic Range, to differentiate these approaches from “true” HDR.

Something I haven’t tried out in a while is Amalence’s HDRAW standalone utility. This utilizes Tone Mapping technique, allowing it to preserve the details while fitting the highest dynamic range image, taken from a single RAW photo, into the limited dynamic range of a single JPEG or any other 8-bit format.

It displays the options in popular filter examples that you just need to click on the most pleasing option (ie not shinny painting please)

Another way  I have seen described to get a HDR set from a single image is to take a well exposed image and create an overexposed version and save that and then an underexposed version. Normally by moving the exposure slider by the equivalent of one f-stop. This might let you use tone mapping tools but it does not get you extra tonal range, you can find in bracketed exposures. If you want to follow this approach the new AfterShot HDR has this as its second option to create a HDR file (I don't recommend this approach)

The final approach, which I feel is the most obvious, is to use software like lightroom to stretch the tonal rendering to its maximum (well maximum acceptable amount). In this example I am using lightroom’s development module I just use the basic tonal controls controls at the top of the development tool panel. I fist try the whote balance, although in this case I feeel the as shot does reflect the warmth of the first dawn light colours well. Next I have a adjusted the exposure up a little (moving the whole histogram a littel to the right because it is so heavily biased to the left, the dark side). Next I adjust the shadows and blacks to keep the forground dark (and hide the shadow detail, for pictorial reasons). Finally I lift the highlights and the whites (there aren’t many as shown by the histogram). I lift the clarity (local contrast) and vibrance (the intensity of the deeper co0lours just a little.  I do have a preset I developed ages ago called SDR+ which follows these steps but I actually prefer to do the steps manually because I can finesse the sliders in each step.

A number of software programs offers histogram stretching tools and they can produce HDR like results but they are less easily controlled than the tonal tools in packages like lightoom and AfterShot.

A Beautiful Dawn and being Accustomed to My Camera

Even though I was still half asleep and had not put in my contact lenses, I couldn't help but notice the magnificent sunrise. So I quickly grabbed my camera, despite being dark and not being able to see clearly I was able to get the camera in Exposure Priority and dial up what I thought might have been a higher ISO (I got both right) But I could tell the exposure would be way to slow (ie 1/4 second) to be hand held (click on the image on the right to see how blurry the resulting photo turned out). I didn’t even check the screen and cranked the aperture wheel down a few notches (not knowing or being able to see). These sounded better, possible quick enough, and I took a couple of overlapping images to make a panorama..

The image above is just a quick collage created with picasa. I think my beloved Pentax has done a great job even though I wasn’t able to visually check the setting or button I was pressing. Naturally I could see enough where to point the camera in the right direct and could hear the autofocus tracking my lens back and forth.
This story continue (I took a few sets of bracketed), after using my muscle  memory to select my user programmed mode on the main dial (which is preprogramed to create a series of EV values)

I had breakfast and put my lenses in, upload the photos and like the initial pano set. So I have taken it though Autostitch and used Perfect Enhance to hold down the digital noise.

The exercise of using your camera without looking at the dials, and just taking the picture is highly recommended. (Even in the Dark)

Indian Ocean Dawn

Taken at altitude as the sun rose over the Indian Ocean.

PhotoFriday :: Sunrise

For PhotoFriday‘s topic Sunrise

ThePatch :: Landscape/Sunrise

This was one theme I was really looking forward to, I like the striking lighting of sunsets and sunrise but have learned whilst they make wonderful images they don’t sell as prints, I suspect everyone thinks they can do better themselves with their iPhone or compact digital camera. So I hadn’t been putting as much effort (perhaps subconsciously) into being there at the right time and in the right place recently. However I had figured getting nice reflections off the nearby lake in Jells Park would be perfect. Well nature let me down! I had a week of very ordinary overcast lighting and so little colour. Its not as if I got bored or discourage. There was actually plenty of things going on to photograph. Which reinforced the 50/50 time limit rule, at least that’s what Matt Kloskowski called it in a recently. The idea is to take your intended shot(s) and then take a many again trying something different and perhaps more creatively. You will return home happier trust me! Here are just a few of the things I saw & photographed

Returning to the theme at hand. I only got one morning with much colour and I was not in the spot I planned, but I did find a couple of interesting compositions and thankfully took a couple of bracketed sets. The autoawesome HDR* created by Google+ was very good by their normal performance BUT it was teetering on the surreal, not what I wanted. Oo I redid my own HDR this time using Picturenaut to just merge the images and give me a 16bit file which I further manipulated in Lightroom with some additional tonal and colour tweaks in Perfect Effects 8 ( A sobering thought is I probably wouldn’t have gone that route if I hadn’t seen the google+ HDR*, see the first two images below).

PS please excuse the lateness of this post I was actually hoping for a good sunrise this morning.

Morning Has Broken

 I got up early this morning, to try and get a good #Landscape #Sunrise Photo for this week's The Patch Theme. I was not quiet in the right position but I did like the result of this image through the reeds in google+'s Autoawesome #HDR.

Original: imageo.withknown.com/2014/morning-has-broken

RAW Sunrise post processed three ways

These are all processed from the same RAW file. The Sunrise only glimpsed between the clouds this morning and I did manage one shoot, but it is overblown on the horizon and a bit glum elsewhere else, A typical flat RAW file from a high contrast scene. so I decided to see what my software could independently do with the same basic task of balancing the image tonality. Hover you mouse over the pictures to see details.
I think this just goes to show that while I may prefer to do the tonal tweaking myself but by using AfterShot Pro’s perfectly clear single click adjustment will give me a very good idea of what is possible. The rest is personal preference and judgement.

Dawn Patrol

I got up early this morning to take in the sunrise, but with clear skies there was only a little colour in the predawn sky and a lot of strong contrast once the sun rose. Still the reflection of the first light on the slight chop added a little interest and texture.

PhotoFriday :: First Light

Multi-image Stitched Panorama
For PhotoFriday‘s topic First Light

Red Sky in the Morning...

The fact that it has rained on the grand prix will not surprise those that saw the sunrise.

Photographing the dawn

Photogrsphing the dawn, originally uploaded by imageo.

As the first rays appear the beach was already full of joggers and dog wakers, and photographers!

Sunset, Sunrise & Evening Light in Perth

Daybreak - South Pacific Dawn

For PhotoFriday 's topic Daybreak

Noumenian Dawn

 
Two photos stitched using autostitch

PhotoFriday topic dawn

Sunrise

Yet another multi-image panorama, the photos were taken in new guinea two years ago BA (thats Before Autostitch, well before I started using autostitch). Just goes to show it can be worthwhile revisiting some of your old photos.

For PhotoFriday's topic Sunrise