Lovely gardens

[Penners]

I have just realised how incredibly lucky I am to have a husband who thinks "lovely statue" not "old landrover" when he contemplates something to put in the garden.

Lucky? I'm sorry, Yer Ladyship, but 'Is Lordship sounds dead boring. :wink:

 

[Penners]

I thought that I would post this as my mate put this up on Flickr this morning.

He has adapted his camera to take pictures in IR which is why the colours are a bit weird. The picture has also been HDR'ed so it is likely made up of 5 or so pictures taken at different exposures.

I'm glad to see that he's got the cleaning cloth on the roof, ready for a quick buff-up.

I've been playing about with exposure and focus stacking myself, recently. It certainly opens up new photographic possibilities, but I've* decided that the huge investment in time means that it's either the house works or Photoshop that has to be sacrificed.





*As you'll have realised, this masculine first-personal pronoun should really be a feminine third-personal pronoun.

 

[Moo]

exposure and focus stacking

That sounds really interesting, Penners. When you've got the time, I'd be grateful if you would explain what it is (and how it differs from Layers in Photoshop)

 

[MdB]

HDR = High dynamic range. Created by combining two or more photographs of the same object taken with different exposures. It is best explained with an example:

Top left is the image taken with what the camera thought was the best exposure. As it is a shot into the sun, the sky is over exposed and the wall is underexposed.

Top right is an additional picture taken two stops underexposed. The sky is now better exposed though the rest of the picture is in darkness.

Bottom left is an additional picture taken two stops overexposed. The sky is now completed over exposed but the wall in now better exposed.

These three photos were then combined to make a single HDR photo and the result is shown bottom right. It combines the correct exposures for the different areas so all the detail is visible.

Producing HDRs can be done manually using photoshop or the gimp and there are tutorials on how to do it if you google. However, it isn't a particuly easy or quick process so most people use a program designed to do most of the hard work for you. Photomatix is one, there are many others.

There are lots of options and settings you can play around with which can improve the picture without going overboard:

(inlaw's pics)

Alternatively, you can push the effect further than it really ought to go:

(mate's pic)

(my pic)

 

[Flyfisher]

Moo - Focus stacking is a technique for increasing the depth of field (focus) in a photo and is often used in close-up photography.

Imagine trying to take a close-up photo of a fly. The DOF for such a close-up will be so small that it will not be possible to get the whole fly in focus. With focus stacking, a series of photos are taken, each with a different plane of focus. Special software is then used to combine the in-focus portions of each photo into a single photo, which should show the entire fly in full focus.

I'm sure there will be loads of examples out there in www-land. Clever stuff though!

MdB - Some good HDR photos there. I wonder how long it will be before HDR capability is built into digital cameras? Of course, fill-in flash can achieve a similar effect in some situations. I find myself using flash quite often in very bright sunshine, especially when snapping people in hats.

 

[Penners]

Moo

MdB and FF have given you much better explanations of those two techniques than I could. But essentially they amount to the same thing - taking the best bits of a number of identical but differently exposed/focused photos and combining them into one picture.

MdB - I'd love a brief tutorial (by PM if necessary and if you have the time) on how you did your treatment of the two characters and the dog. It's surely much more just an HDR stack. Was solarising involved?

 

[MdB]

MdB - I'd love a brief tutorial (by PM if necessary and if you have the time) on how you did your treatment of the two characters and the dog. It's surely much more just an HDR stack. Was solarising involved?

That pick was HDR'd from a single raw photo - It would be impossible to stack multiple pictures of people unless they stayed very very still.

To make the pic I used the program Qtpfsgui 1.9.3 (not the best program in the world) with the following settings:
tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Mantiuk
Parameters:
Contrast Mapping factor: 2.253
Saturation Factor: 0.8
Detail Factor: 18.1
PreGamma: 1
The important setting above is the detail factor. This brings out all the edges (and the noise) in the picture.

You could get a similar(ish) effect if you high pass filter an image.

 

[Feltwell]

[To make the pic I used the program Qtpfsgui 1.9.3 (not the best program in the world)

Nor is it the easiest to pronounce!

(Must get a great score in Scrabble though).

 

[Penners]

Many thanks, MdB. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't offer images in RAW format, so I'm starting at a distinct disadvantage. However, I'm planning to rectify this with a new camera (a DSLR or possibly a four-thirds) later this year. So I shall keep a note of your tutorial.

I tried a high pass filter, and added a little noise - interesting, but not nearly as good as yours.