K
KWR Phase One
Guest
While shooting in Olympic National Park with some friends a week ago we had a great evening for sunsets. Sunsets are obviously, especially when shooting directly into the sun a very high contrast image situation and present difficulties getting any detail in subject matter. If you were shooting with a DSLR you could attempt to shoot a range of overs and unders and then work some HDR magic after the fact. In landscape photography that can be difficult especially if there is any kind of breeze or in this case moving water. I was shooting with a Phase One P65+ and a 28mm lens for these next three examples.
The P65+ has an extraordinary dynamic range and captures a very large amount of data on a single exposure. So, what I did was made adjustments for contrast, saturation and color balance to the original image. I then cloned the variant two times. In one variant I pulled down the exposure about 1.5 stops and on the other pushed it 1.5 stops. I then processed the images to tiff files. Then using PhotoMatix Pro, I did a tone map and HDR. I have two examples that I will put in separate posts below. One below is modest just beginning to show detail in shadow area and bringing in detail in highlights and the other is a bit more dramatic and sort of fun showing what really can be recovered. The beauty is that I am doing this all from one exposure so the water and trees and such are not affected or blurred. To really appreciate this you must see the image at 100% which is about 20x30 inches.
As always, for me it is all about having fun taking the shot and this was a fun one. I will also post a waterfall shot that I did the same thing with. As a side note I will make this comment. HDR can be a good tool. Usually it is overdone and becomes somewhat unrealistic. I don’t usually like that effect but here it works and it is fun (plus it shows how much detail is really captured). So, enjoy!
P.S. I have never posted images before on this forum so I hope this works....
The P65+ has an extraordinary dynamic range and captures a very large amount of data on a single exposure. So, what I did was made adjustments for contrast, saturation and color balance to the original image. I then cloned the variant two times. In one variant I pulled down the exposure about 1.5 stops and on the other pushed it 1.5 stops. I then processed the images to tiff files. Then using PhotoMatix Pro, I did a tone map and HDR. I have two examples that I will put in separate posts below. One below is modest just beginning to show detail in shadow area and bringing in detail in highlights and the other is a bit more dramatic and sort of fun showing what really can be recovered. The beauty is that I am doing this all from one exposure so the water and trees and such are not affected or blurred. To really appreciate this you must see the image at 100% which is about 20x30 inches.
As always, for me it is all about having fun taking the shot and this was a fun one. I will also post a waterfall shot that I did the same thing with. As a side note I will make this comment. HDR can be a good tool. Usually it is overdone and becomes somewhat unrealistic. I don’t usually like that effect but here it works and it is fun (plus it shows how much detail is really captured). So, enjoy!
P.S. I have never posted images before on this forum so I hope this works....