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Exposure bracketing in Oly 5 Mk II and LR

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
I am amazed by the quality of the results I get photographing environments where the range of light is wide.
At hand, I make an exposure bracketing of 3 images not worrying very much about how far the images are from each other in terms of exposure. I just make a wild guess.
Aperture Priority mode BTW :)

At home, I run Merge to HDR in LR. Great results. I then adjust a bit on Dehaze, Clarity, Exposure...
Here are the 3 initial shots and then the final result. Do you like it ?

i-5d5JCsd-L.jpg

i-bB85DxN-L.jpg

i-C3tk2Kq-L.jpg


i-2zrkzSP-X3.jpg
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
A superb job, Antonio. Looks like the result from a Phase one or LF camera. How fast are those pictures taken. Any delays or almost instant? My Ricoh GR-2 is very fast and silent!

This is a very worthwhile modern camera “extra” that allows spectacular impressiveness from a camera that we can afford to buy!




i-2zrkzSP-X3.jpg




..........and yes, it’s also amazing at your dedication to us here that’s you would buy a German car just for this so superb demonstration ? ?

This is really high class!

Asher
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
Asher, it is just a coincidence that I shot a BMW.
Indeed, I like these cars but... ;)

No delais, almost instant. I make a 3 stop bracketing shooting in sequence, without lifting the finger. I make the camera to produce sound so I can hear the process going on.
LR merges the images. I accept the result but I do small adjustments on LR, at taste.
I export to tif because I do not like psd files.
Another one from inside a shop.

i-jKCpgKv-X3.jpg
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
This is another great result, Antonio!

It’s really helpful to be able to regain the view through the windows. But sometimes you might want to go back and tone that down if there are people in the room as the main subject. That is why I use Photoshop!

In Autopano giga, put one picture off to the side and stitch and then one can choose which of several moving people one chooses for thecfused

Asher
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
But Asher, I also use Photoshop...
I tried to do the merging in it and the result was not as good.
I have not yet tried to do the same with people in movement but that depends also on the result one wants to get.
Have a good and nice weekend :)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I am a Luddite, I must admit!

I have owned Lightroom for years but have never used it. I must try again.

I dumped in drives but not everything was imported. I am sure it’s simple, but using Media Pro as a catalog, is so much more straightforward. Just drag in a drive and it’s all sorted.

When Adobe LR came out originally, I thought, what’s it for?

But obviously I am on the wrong side of history. For some reason, that escapes me, most pros use LR!

Asher
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Nice Antonio !

HDR is a technique I use since 2011 to shoot interior of yachts and houses.
With a Canon at the beginning, then with a Sinar HY6 and now for 5 years with Pentax MF cameras.
After many tests, I have determined that 6 exposures gives much better results, particularly in the gradients…
I remember having seen HDR made of 7 shots by Cem some years ago!
At the beginning I exported tif files (from Capture One for the Canon files and from Lightroom for the Pentax's) and merged them with Photomatix Pro.
Now it is much easier with Lightroom! and the results are even better.
Of course there is always some work in PS to finish the job such as reintroducing moving persons or objects such as landscape in the back ground (Particularly for boats!).
Below are some exemple:


L52_NCL8139-1711x1280.jpg


45R1690-1920x1256.jpg


45R7000_Chrisco_25x38-1915x1280.jpg


NCL2157_A4-1711x1280.jpg


Int_NCZ7857_A4-1709x1280.jpg


45R7055_Chrisco_25x38-1915x1280.jpg

It happens that the effect given by the movement of background is "interesting" and can be kept…


Want to see more?
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
So, HDR is used to balance inside and outside light. For a comparison, this is an image I already posted. I took it in 2010, so this is an example of the processing capabilities of 2010 from a single capture of a camera at the time.

 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
So, HDR is used to balance inside and outside light. For a comparison, this is an image I already posted. I took it in 2010, so this is an example of the processing capabilities of 2010 from a single capture of a camera at the time.


Latest raw files have a greater potential than before and one can recover a lot on a well exposed file.
However when the dynamic range is over the sensor capabilties, one have to use HDR rendering…
It happens to me to use exposures from - 3ev to +3 ev unbeatable!
However2 one have to be careful (unless one wants "arty" results) and adjust the resulting file so it still looks "normal"…
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
Thank you Nicolas for your excellent shots ! They look as you say, "normal". You have nicely overcome the movements of the persons...
I have not exposed with more than 3 shots and they have always been handheld. I have to try something larger, perhaps 7 exposures. However, yesterday I made 4 shots...
And I have not - so far - tested how LR behaves when we adjust each image and then merge them using the same process.
The results are much better with the use of a tripod.
-
Thank you Jerome for your contribution to this tread.
My last camera before the Panasonic and then Olympus were (still have them) Canon20 D and 5 D. Very simple cameras regarding the potentialities of the models of these days.

-
Yesterday I made these difficult shots. The dynamic range is huge and so are the light temperatures... With tripod and 4 shots.

Regarde la 4L ! :) :)

i-HmXKsgt-S.jpg
-
i-sc8kcTJ-S.jpg


i-xXPj5KX-S.jpg
-
i-N5LmM7b-S.jpg


i-4FDWRj8-X3.jpg
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
So, HDR is used to balance inside and outside light. For a comparison, this is an image I already posted. I took it in 2010, so this is an example of the processing capabilities of 2010 from a single capture of a camera at the time.




Jerome,

This is already fabulous. I love it. but there interest on the walls might not be fully realized to your taste, or not?

....or it could be that the walls need to be poorly lit to maintain the idea of abandonment?

Today, could might you consider to express this picture even closer to your wishes, if it just arrived in your camera and had no other frame of reference? After all, the "greats" who pioneered photography enthusiastically returned in later years and reworked that same negative for months, if need be, to leverage their new ideas and capabilities.

...and again, wasn't ability to re-vsit a picture the great potential advantage we were promised for the reward of saving all out favorite RAW files?

Asher

I, myself, am currently re-cataloging 50 TB of old hard drives to mine my early files and hope to find files that demand re-processing in more modern software.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Nice Antonio !

HDR is a technique I use since 2011 to shoot interior of yachts and houses.
With a Canon at the beginning, then with a Sinar HY6 and now for 5 years with Pentax MF cameras.
After many tests, I have determined that 6 exposures gives much better results, particularly in the gradients…
I remember having seen HDR made of 7 shots by Cem some years ago!
At the beginning I exported tif files (from Capture One for the Canon files and from Lightroom for the Pentax's) and merged them with Photomatix Pro.
Now it is much easier with Lightroom! and the results are even better.
Of course there is always some work in PS to finish the job such as reintroducing moving persons or objects such as landscape in the back ground (Particularly for boats!).
Below are some exemple:


Nicolas,

I have chosen just the very first 3, as they would be daunting a challenge for me!


L52_NCL8139-1711x1280.jpg


45R1690-1920x1256.jpg


45R7000_Chrisco_25x38-1915x1280.jpg







Here, the challenge is not merely to re-expose all parts of the image to be well lit! Far from that. Its' far, far more difficult. This work requires a lot of labor, experience and artistic judgment, dealing with feelings about human behavior and perception.

Obviously a bowl of fruit is critical, but if all is lit perfectly, the image would lose a sense of reality.

One has to imagine and then devise "conceptual filters" that divide the entire complex scene into co-existing zones in equilibrium and harmony.

It would be so easy to use LR or Photoshop or anything else, to stack the exposures aiutomatically and then there would be a dead, synthetic look, geometrically correct, but lacking in life.

So how much effort does one need to spend to get these results? What are the stages in your process?

Asher
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Nicolas,

I have chosen just the very first 3, as they would be daunting a challenge for me!


Here, the challenge is not merely to re-expose all parts of the image to be well lit! Far from that. Its' far, far more difficult. This work requires a lot of labor, experience and artistic judgment, dealing with feelings about human behavior and perception.

Obviously a bowl of fruit is critical, but if all is lit perfectly, the image would lose a sense of reality.

One has to imagine and then devise "conceptual filters" that divide the entire complex scene into co-existing zones in equilibrium and harmony.

It would be so easy to use LR or Photoshop or anything else, to stack the exposures aiutomatically and then there would be a dead, synthetic look, geometrically correct, but lacking in life.

So how much effort does one need to spend to get these results? What are the stages in your process?

Asher

Well, the automatic stacking never brings you a perfect image as a start, one have to rework it after the merging process.
As you know I always shoot raw, the great strength of Lightroom is that the software produces a DNG file then one is still working on a raw file and a so rich raw full of mater to work with.
BTW Antonio, LR doesn't care about pre-adjustments on each file, it merges the original untouched files, you have to make your adjustments on the dng.
When the dng suits one's wishes, it is exported as a 16 bit tif file to be reworked in PS with layers to reintroduce from one of the original file (also exported as a 16 bit tif) some elements that moved during the multi shots… It may be a different one for each model and another one for the background (boats always moving!)
The most difficult part is to deal with sun beams when the boat moves a lot, but these sun beams do bring life!
When that work is done, one have to correct dust spots, real spots, fingerprints on glasses, model's skins etc. but this has nothing to do with HDR…

The post on such images, depending of the shooting conditions may last 20 minutes to 4 hours of work. Each!
The Lightroom ability to merge HDR is a real help !

Oh, and BTW Antonio, I always use a tripod for all interior shots : )
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
Nicolas, thank you for commenting.
I only use tripod when in circumstances that are more difficult. Tripods take time to use and if I go downtown for a walk in town, I do not feel like caring one...
I tend not to use tripod... but I do understand that it could (would) be of great use.

My LR doesn't make a stack of the 3 images in a DNG file. I have opened the DNG file in CC and no, nothing. One simple layer. LR stacks the selected files yes, but within itself, inside LR.

I also only shoot RAW files and also use 16 bit as I am aware of the advantages.
In fact, I make the adjustments on the DNG file in... LR. I get nice results.

I do understand that you must be more demanding in your images than I am. Perhaps, opening the RAW files in CC and Aligning them and saving each of them in different TIF files would be more confusing, lots of work and time consuming... No way. :) Brrrr... confusing.

I have redone this DNG file. The best result was with the following settings.
Most of the time I change DNG files to TIF for no special reason.

i-dnTrk6t-XL.png


i-dmPqWJp-X3.jpg
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
@Antonio
Of course the DNG file is one layer only, all data (plural of datum) have been merged!
But the complete information from the files are within the dng (just compare the Gb of the dng with the one from a single raw).
I do a lot of correction on the DNG in LR (perspective, colors, wb, exposure etc.)
Then I export the 16 bit tif.
If I need one or more original files to manually merge with the exported tif from the dng, I first apply all correction needed (above all all the perspective and lens corrections).
Then the work goes on in PS.
I use a tripod because the framing is by mm and so are the verticals and perspective.
I never use the auto align function as the boat and models are moving too much to be corrected by LR, this is why I use layering in PS as explained above :)

FYI a DNG ,made with 5 files merged from the Pentax 645Z, sizes almost 200 Mb…
 

Antonio Correia

Well-known member
Thank you Nicolas for the notes. :)

Three images merged and saved within LR it's only 60 Megas !

But 3 files merged in LR opened in CC and saved as one as tif (yes, 16 bit) have 189 Megas !

It must be because the tif file has adjustments...
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Oups!
My memory failed!
I abandoned for a long time Photomatix pro, it did a decent job but not for series…
In fact with the same workflow before the LR HDR capabilities was to export directly files to LR/Enfuse a plugin designed by Timothy Armes.
It had (has) the good advantage to batch series and deliver 16 bit files automatically reimport in LR for further work…
LR HDR is poor for batching, but so much easier and results are comparable except that you get a DNG instead of a tif…

If interested, you may read and find LR/Enfuse there
 
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