It's amazing.....

[daveh]

....how well modern cameras cope with tricky exposures.



Sunset, West Kirby, looking over a frozen boating lake and the Dee Estuary. (4 miles from home.)

Taken yesterday afternoon, this was very much just a point I shoot. I put no real thought into it. The photo is straight from the camera.

[PeterW]

As you say, Dave, an amazing shot.

At least it is to those of us who struggled to get this sort of picture with the film cameras of yesteryear, even some good ones, without getting loads of halation.

Younger photographers take this sort of magic as everyday photography, but that's progress - and more power to it!

I haven't been back to West Kirby since I did my basic RAF square bashing there as a lowly AC Plonk more than 65 years ago. No the area has changed a lot.

Sorry if it sounds like running down your home area, but I never hear the name West Kirby without it bringing back to mind a little ditty we used to sing to the tune of he Mountains of Mourne:

West Kirby, West Kirby's a wonderful place
But the organisation's a friggin' disgrace.
There are Corporals and Sergeants and Flight Sergeants too
With their hands in their pockets and frig all to do.

They stand on the Square and they rave and they shout.
They shout about things they know nothing about.
When my eight weeks are over how glad I will be
To leave dear old West Kirby that stands by the sea.

We had four guys in our billet who were very good at harmonising it, real barber-shop quartet stuff.

The RAF station, all barrack squares and wooden huts, was a little way inland from West Kirby, and about the same distance from Hoylake. I understand it was dismantled around 1958 and is now mainly farmland.

PeterW

[nikonbob]

Dave

Yea, the metering systems in modern cameras are amazing. Add to that the improvement in lens coatings, as PeterW says, and this type of scene is more easily done today. I enjoy all these benefits with my DSLR but sometimes think that wrestling a similarlly good image from an old !930s,40s, or 50s camera can be more rewarding if not technically as good. OTH not having to concentrate so much on the technical aspects of a shot allows a photographer to concentrate more on composition and such. I don't think I would want to be without acess to both worlds.

Bob

[daveh]

Peter, I'll go down sometime and photograph what is left of it. West Kirby was, I believe, one of three RAF square-bashing places, so it's no wonder that about 1 in 3 RAF National Service people know about it.

Bob, the trouble is we are all in to much of a rush now and don't really think about what we are doing enough. We assume the camera will get it right.

Must dash.

[mickeyobe]

I have found my Pentax K100d can perform near miracles in poor lighting.

I do not hesitate to Photoshop those pictures.

I am constantly amazed by the amount of rich detail in what appear to be hopelessly black shadows. As a result I now tend to under expose in order to save the highlights knowing that the shadows will yield good details with a little help from PS.

Kodachrome 10 ASA - The good old days??? Bah! Humbug!

Mickey

[nikonbob]

Mickey

I do the same with the metering on the D700 and have a -.03 compensation perminately set and apply more or less as the situation warrants. It is easier to bring detail to the shadows than to try and salvage blown highlights in PS. Seems I used to use the same minus comp when shooting slide film IIRC.

Bob

[daveh]

It was always said that for slide film "expose for the highlights", and for negative film "expose for the shadows". With the cost of bracketing being nil with digital 'film' it's arguably worth considering taking every shot that way. I have been trying to work out how I can do this for rugby action shots. I think I have a solution: I need three cameras.

Have any of you gone down the HDR route at all?

[nikonbob]

Dave

Buried in the menu banks of the D700 is the ability to set a permenant compensation value, which is what I have done. I believe that you could then use auto bracketing at the cameras highest burst rate to do this for rugby action shots. With auto bracketing you can set just how much of compensation you want on either side of normal, which in my case normal would be -.03 comp. Ok, I'm dizzy now from all that thinking so in the long run it might be easier to just use 3 cameras. Yea, I think digital is more like shooting slide fim than negative film in regards to exposure. I was used to neg film and had blown highlights galore going to digital. I've never tried HDR but that could be another solution.

Bob

[daveh]

Bob,

Yes, I can set EV compensation and auto-bracket - so the three exposures come out as, say, -1, -0.3, + 0.3. The trouble is that the worst exposed shot would probably be the best in other ways. (I'd have to recheck the Canon 7D. I am not sure if it will do + or - 2 or 3 stops: bracketing again is up to 2 or 3 stops: Each can be set for 1/3 or 1/2 stop increments.)

The big problem is with a heavily backlit shot. There is a need, as you have both said, not to over-expose the highlights - but then there is a need to increase the exposure to prevent silhouetting of the subject. (Of course there is always fill in flash, but even with that the result isn't always successful.) I have some photos (if I can find them) which show what I mean.

Dave.

[nikonbob]

Dave

I guess sometimes you just have to expose for the subject and let everything else fall where it may and try and save it in PP. I don't do action shots of athletes but I think I would find flash annoying when I am playing a game. Then again I don't play any games so what would I know. Let ud know, if you try the HDR route, if that works.

Bob

[mickeyobe]

As usual, I am stumped by abbreviations.

What is HDR?

Mickey

[daveh]

mickey,

Sorry, I should have explained further. High Dynamic Range.

The theory is that you take several photos at different exposures and them combine them to increase the range of the final photo.

More information can be found at:
www.easyhdr.com/

Click on the <HDR in astrophography> and get no more bad moon rising - perhaps.

Dave,

[barbarian]

Have any of you gone down the HDR route at all?

Yep. And it's pretty good. If you have a DSLR, shoot in RAW, and then adjust it for exposure to make 3-7 different exposure level jpegs. Then you can combine them like multiple shots to get a true HDR.

Or you could try Martin Sikes' AutoHDR; it produces an HDR effect with only one exposure. That would work with a single film exposure, if you could convert it to a Jpeg.
www.autohdr.co.uk/

Here's a light use of AutoHDR in sports:


For reasons I'm not sure of, it tends to make folds of clothing and muscle definition more noticeable.

Here's a true HDR:


I like to keep it lighter than most people do with HDR. It gets garish if you aren't careful. If you want to play with the idea before you buy anything, a nice freeware program is Luminance:
qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/

A good freeware RAW processor is UFRAW:
ufraw.sourceforge.net/

[daveh]

I've played with HDR a little. Your football photo shows how it should be used. Many seem to overdo it with the result that it looks totally false.

[nikonbob]

I like your use of HDR and would not have guessed you even used it in the two examples you posted. I agree that heavy handed use of HDR does get garish and very obvious.

Bob