Treatments...Before and After

[texag93]

But the sunset that accompanies Sutton's pumpjack doesn't hold the same ......."whatever"....having seen the original.

(P.S. I'm not pickin on Sutton, just using him for an example because I know he won't care.....besides, he's probably out shooting yotes)

I'm not out shooting yotes...about to go shoot some pics though. Here is another perspective on the same shot.

[Dale Moser]

That one is very nice as well! I just didn't realize how many of the vivid colors we see in some of these great photos were enhanced after the fact. Again......all still GREAT SHOTS!


Side Note:I just got home with my new FX3!

[Wildman]

I guess you still believe in the tooth fairy too don't you Dale?

[texag93]

Dale thinks Playboy is "as is".......

[Deer716]

Here's a couple before and after.

[Eric4x4]

Awesome pictures you people are good

[Dale Moser]

I guess you still believe in the tooth fairy too don't you Dale?

No, I just believed 3 grand worth of camera, lens, and all that other crap was enough to take a good picture.

[Sika]

Man, I wish I had 3 grand to spend on camera crap.

I'm still using a three-hundred dollar point and shoot and a version of Photoshop that's 7 years old.

[Snakelover]

I normally just upload "as is" to flickr. But here is a rather extreme exception...

[Shane]

!

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Good point Joey, I'll shut up.

Man, that's AWESOME work! Your cooker hootuses are the bomb.

[Shane]

A good bit of the time, even a $3K camera can't produce an image that looks exactly like your eyes saw it in real life anyway. Reason being, like Michael said, neither film nor a digital sensor can handle as wide a range of light and dark as our eyes can.

An EV, or exposure value, is a measure of range of light. When you move up one EV, you double the amount of light. Move down and EV and you cut the light in half. Our eyes can process about 15 EVs (or close to that). Film and digital sensors can process about 6 EVs. Our eyes can adjust for varying degrees of light and dark in one view. A camera can only be adjusted for one part of the view, and anything that doesn't fit that adjustment gets lost in either black shadows or white blown out highlights.

Print paper and computer monitors are incapable of handling as much dynamic range as our eyes are too, so it is often impossible to get a truly realistic image anyway. That is the problem that lead to HDR technology. High Dynamic Range processing is cool. I hope to master it one of these days.

Basically, you take multiple images of a scene that has a wide range of light and dark. You set a range of exposures so that each part of the scene is properly exposed in at least one of your shots. Then the software combines the images into one by using only the properly exposed pieces from each one. Then you have to tonemap it back down to a LDR (low dynamic range) image so that your monitor and/or print paper will be able to handle it.

Here's an example of 3 shots I took that had everything from dark shadows under the trees in the background to bright white clouds lit by the sun that was just about to set. There was some really golden light hitting things too. One image just wouldn't capture it all. Here are the 3 shots. First was the image I got when setting the exposure to what the camera's meter said was "right". The next two were +2 and -2 EVs off of the first one. The 4th one is what I got after running all 3 through Photomatix and then a little fine tuning in Photoshop. This one truly is closer to what my eyes saw at the moment than any of the others straight out of the camera. I'm sure it's not exactly accurate either, but it's closer to what my eyes saw.

[Dale Moser]

A good bit of the time, even a $3K camera can't produce an image that looks exactly like your eyes saw it in real life anyway. Reason being, like Michael said, neither film nor a digital sensor can handle as wide a range of light and dark as our eyes can.

An EV, or exposure value, is a measure of range of light. When you move up one EV, you double the amount of light. Move down and EV and you cut the light in half. Our eyes can process about 15 EVs (or close to that). Film and digital sensors can process about 6 EVs. Our eyes can adjust for varying degrees of light and dark in one view. A camera can only be adjusted for one part of the view, and anything that doesn't fit that adjustment gets lost in either black shadows or white blown out highlights.

Print paper and computer monitors are incapable of handling as much dynamic range as our eyes are too, so it is often impossible to get a truly realistic image anyway. That is the problem that lead to HDR technology. High Dynamic Range processing is cool. I hope to master it one of these days.

Basically, you take multiple images of a scene that has a wide range of light and dark. You set a range of exposures so that each part of the scene is properly exposed in at least one of your shots. Then the software combines the images into one by using only the properly exposed pieces from each one. Then you have to tonemap it back down to a LDR (low dynamic range) image so that your monitor and/or print paper will be able to handle it.

Here's an example of 3 shots I took that had everything from dark shadows under the trees in the background to bright white clouds lit by the sun that was just about to set. There was some really golden light hitting things too. One image just wouldn't capture it all. Here are the 3 shots. First was the image I got when setting the exposure to what the camera's meter said was "right". The next two were +2 and -2 EVs off of the first one. The 4th one is what I got after running all 3 through Photomatix and then a little fine tuning in Photoshop. This one truly is closer to what my eyes saw at the moment than any of the others straight out of the camera. I'm sure it's not exactly accurate either, but it's closer to what my eyes saw.

Thank you for a great explanation Shane!

And thanks for the kind words, but building cooking hootuses is nothing up beside of them flys you tie, and much of the phototalent here! You can teach a monkey to weld.

[Sika]

Shane, that is an excellent example..nicely done! I too am fascinated by HDR and I would like to give it a try sometime. The human eye is so much better than a camera and HDR photography can bring out tonal quality in an image similar to what human eyes can see.

[Gerald S]

I mess with HDR as well. Still haven't got it down the way you have, though. A lot of times I think people go to far with the HDR for my taste. What you have posted so far is, in my opinion, the perfect example of how HDR should be used. Good stuff, Shane.

[Shane]

Thanks Sika and Gerald. That one came out OK. I have many more that are overdone. It's hard to find the right balance.

You can teach a monkey to weld.

May be true, but monkeys couldn't build what you build.

I was welding in Ag class one day in high school, and it started feeling really warm. I lifted my helmet up and looked around. Everybody had wide eyes looking at me. I looked down and my flannel shirt that I had over my t-shirt was on FIRE!

I don't think God wanted me to weld.