Category Archives: technique

Re-Editing a B-2 Shot

Periodically, when I am looking through my image catalog for a specific subject for one project or another, I come across some images from a while back that look okay but might benefit from some of the more recent approaches to processing that I have adopted. This doesn’t always help but it can be fun to start from scratch on a raw file and then see whether the final version is any better than the previous attempt. I created a new virtual copy in Lightroom and zero out all of the sliders, upgrade to the latest processing version and give it a go.

I did this a little while ago on a shot of a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. I shot this jet at Palmdale many years ago on a visit with my friend, Paul. The shots were okay, and I was happy with them at the time. Here I shall show you the current version first and then the next one down is the previous result of my processing from when it was shot. Do you think it is a significant change?

Spider on My Car Means Macro Time

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I was waiting for a friend to arrive at SEA and was parked up in Burien. I noticed a couple of small jumping spiders on the car and, since I had the macro lens in the trunk, decided to try and get a few shots of them. The problem with spiders and mirrorless cameras is that the focusing logic hasn’t been trained to deal with their multiple eyes. The body tends to be what the camera focuses on. Still, I was able to get a few reasonable shots as they scurried across my car.

Dropping The Shutter Speed For Fun

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One weekend, I was at Boeing Field awaiting something interesting. There was the regular traffic of business jets and, since they were pretty standard fair and the light wasn’t great anyway, I figured I would play with dropping the shutter speed super low. The R3 is great for this because I can select a frame rate of 30fps if I want. When shooting with silly shutter speeds, really high frame rates increase the chance that I might get something that isn’t terrible. Technology overcomes lack of talent!

I was dropping down to 1/50^th or 1/60^th of a second for some of the arrivals. I was using a polarizer to take out a load of light to allow such low shutter speeds on a sunny afternoon. It also didn’t hurt to reduce the glare with the sun so strong. Most shots were worthless but there were a few that came out okay. Full size there were more acceptable ones but, since I was experimenting, I focused on the ones that were really sharp. Such low shutter speeds do result in parallax issues which is not ideal, so I tend to look for the sharpness to be on the front fuselage unless the plane is going well away from me. There were some 737s on test too, so I played with the same techniques for them as well. Maybe I shall go even lower at some point.

Lightroom Noise Reduction Update Testing

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One of the software tools that I find a lot of people talking about these days is DeNoise from Topaz. I have never been terribly bothered by noise in my images. Modern cameras do a pretty remarkable job of handling noise and, for most usage purposes, the noise is not really an issue if it is there. I have posted my efforts with PureRAW in its various forms where I have tried it out to see how the noise reduction comes out and, while I have seen strengths and weaknesses in it, I have never seen it as something I needed to spend on.

Lightroom Classic had one of its periodic updates recently. The big new feature was their own denoise functionality. Much like my experimentation with PureRAW, it analyzes the shot and creates a new DNG file with the noise suppressed. I was curious to see how it would perform and, seeing as it is included in the price of my subscription, I have it anyway. I decided to take some shots I had recently used for the PureRAW3 trial I had done and compare with the Lightroom version.

It defaulted to a 50 level of noise reduction. I don’t know whether this is a percentage and what of but it is a scale so I played with it. I did some at 50 and some at 75 to see whether more aggressive noise reduction had detrimental effects on other parts of the image. Comparing these things and then sharing the results is a touch tricky so I have created a single image from four layers. They are the original Lightroom develop settings, the PureRAW3 version, the 75 denoise settings and the 50 denoise settings. I mask them to make the image into four sections. Then, to make it useful on here, I have zoomed in to show the borders between them to provide some sort of comparison.

The PureRAW3 result is very aggressive on noise reduction. However, I find it can make some odd artifacts in the images where details were not that clear to begin with. The 75 setting in Lightroom provided a very similar level of noise reduction to PureRAW3. It is slightly noisier but barely enough to matter. A setting of 50 does show more noise. It is still a significant improvement over the basic Camera Raw settings and very usable.

What do I conclude from all of this? First, as I have said before when testing the PureRAW trials, it provides some interesting results but it is not relevant to enough of my work to matter to me sufficient for me to spend a bunch of money on buying it. Having denoise in Lightroom now provides me with a very similar option but within the existing price I am paying for Lightroom. Therefore, I will make use of it when the situation dictates. It would be a regular part of my workflow because really high ISO shots are only an occasional thing for me but having it there when I want it will be handy.

Examine Detail With the Macro

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Every once in a while, I see some detail on something I have and it makes me want to shoot some macro images. Since converting to the R3 with its focus stacking capabilities, macro is so much easier to work with. I had a car which had both printed patterns and embossed elements on it. I thought these looked interesting so set up the macro lens to get a closer look. The focus stacking in Photoshop is so straightforward when shooting on a mount, it takes no time at all to get the shots.

I was interested in the embossed elements but, when I took a look at the resulting shot, I was quite taken by the edge of the car. The layers in the laminate were quite interesting and the detail in the curves of the edge were brought out in the shots. I did also like the way in which the embossed characters come out when you are working so close in. Macro is such an interesting way to look at things that are normally on a scale which means they are lost to us.

Experimenting with PureRAW3

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This blog includes a very infrequent series of posts reviewing the processing powers of PureRAW. The third version of this raw image processor has just been released and I downloaded the trial to see how it performs. I was impressed by what the previous version did to clean up some high ISO shots but the need was limited and the price was high enough that I didn’t see the point in signing up for it. I was curious as to whether the third version would change my mind.

When I download one of these trials, I always try to avoid installing it until I have time to play with it. The trial last 30 days so I want to make sure I make good use of the time. Once I got around to installing it, I put it to work. I was disappointed to find the trial was limited to 20 images at a time which is a little restrictive but, for the purposes of evaluating it, I could work around this. I had two things I wanted to do. First, I wanted to convert some shots that I had previously tried for PureRAW2 to see how different they were. Second, I had some recent night shots which I also wanted to try.

So, how did it perform? Results were mixed. I found the conversion process was quick sometimes and would slow down or stop on others. This was annoying but I suspect is something that they will fix before too long so I wasn’t that worried. What I was surprised about was that, when starting the process in Lightroom, the new DNGs will be reimported into Lightroom. However, this was unbelievably slow. I would set it off, the conversion would finish and then, a long time later, they would suddenly get added. Again, something that is probably going to get fixed but bloody annoying in the mean time.

As for the output, I was quite amazed by the results. I will show here some of the Lightroom edits along with PureRAW2 and PureRAW3 versions of the files. As you can see, the latest version really does clean up images a lot. However, I don’t think it is all good. Some of the shots feel like they have been over sharpened and look too crunchy. Also, the algorithm seems to get imaginative when it comes to lettering on airframes. Some of the results have created shapes that just are not there in the original shot. For some shots, this might not be an issue but, when something is supposed to be recognizable, the odd artifacts show up conspicuously. If the shot had been soft and noisy, you wouldn’t have worried but, because it is supposed to be clear and sharp, the weird results stand out.

Is it worth it? Not for me. I used it on some more normal exposures and couldn’t really see much benefit. Certainly not enough to make the effort worth it. For high noise, it does provide some nice results and some odd side effects but, I don’t shoot enough of them to make that really worthwhile. For now, it shall sit in the interesting but not interesting enough category. Maybe we shall have the fourth installment of this series when PureRAW4 comes out!

Delta/LATAM Comes in After Dark

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Delta picked up a few ex-LATAM Airbus A350-900s as part of that airlines restructuring during the downturn in the airline business caused by the pandemic. They went initially in to storage and then have been progressively moved to Singapore for updating to the Delta configuration. Seattle has been the location for them to come through on their way to Asia. I have missed a few but one was due to come through when I could see it. Sadly, it departed a little late from Victorville and was showing due in after dark.

Since it was an unusual movement, I figured it was still worth the effort. I would use the 500mm since it has a wider aperture and test the low light capabilities of the camera to the full. It still meant some very low shutter speeds but I let the tech compensate for my low skill levels. I was pleasantly surprised by how well some of them came out given the lack of light. Since this shoot, I did also reprocess with PureRAW3 and this improved the quality of the shot further.

Shooting at SEA After Sunset

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One of the things that photographers that have only used digital cameras can’t appreciate is ability to shoot in low light conditions. When I was shooting film, you were already struggling with image quality with ISO 400 film. Early digital cameras got very noisy as the ISO got ramped up but, these days, the capabilities of shooting in very low light are truly amazing for those of us that are old enough to remember what it was like. ISO1000 black and white film was adventurous!

Now I feel quite comfortable trying all sorts of silly things. I had gone down to SEA one evening to try and get a departure that was possibly going out just before sunset. Sadly, it didn’t play ball and the sun was gone by the time it headed out. However, I was there and the camera can do silly ISO numbers so why not. It still needs to drop the shutter speed down quite low but, with a fast burst rate, the chances of getting a reasonable shot are not bad.

I figured I would play around with shooting departure shots as the last of the light was fading away. It was more about trying something different rather than aiming for the perfect shot. I did have some interesting planes to play with but also plenty of Alaska 737s. The light was pretty dim and ISO51200 is quite something to work with but the image quality is really very impressive considering what conditions you are shooting in.

Air Canada Special Early Sunday Departure And Lightroom Masking Options

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Air Canada brings a pair of A220-300s in to SEA each evening – one from Toronto and one from Montreal. They leave the following morning with the Toronto flight heading out early and the Montreal flight following a couple of hours later. The Toronto flight one weekend was the TCA special aircraft so I decided to head out and catch it departing.

The day started very overcast and gloomy but there was a sign that things were going to get better. This did happen but things were still not great when the jet departed. The light had improved a bit but the cloud was still there. When looking at the shots, I figured it was time to make use of the masking options that Lightroom offers. The latest update has improved their usability somewhat. First I drop the exposure of the shot overall to get the sky looking roughly how I want it. Then I select the aircraft suing the Subject option. It does a pretty reasonable job but I do then refine it with an addition brush to bring in the bits it has missed and a subtract brush to take out the detail areas where the mask has overlapped.

The new option is the click on this mask and choose the Duplicate and Invert option. This gives me a sky selection that matches what I have got for the aircraft. For the sky, I can work on the white balance to bring it back to something more cool which suits the overall look of the shot. I can similarly work on the white balance for the jet to make the reds pop more in the livery. The exposure can be brought up a bit with the shadows helping a little while bringing the blacks down while improve the contrast.

All of this is pretty straightforward. One nice feature of the latest update is that you can actually apply the same settings to multiple images. The brush adjustments are not going to work well for this so it is best to do the overall selections and sync to the various images and then, if a shot is worthy of further work, the refining of the mask can be done afterwards. If you know which shot is the best, you can just focus on that one.

Focus Stacking – Photoshop Versus Helicon

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I have played around with focus stacking a lot in recent years. Having a macro lens and a pandemic has given me plenty to opportunity to try stuff out. I was reading something along about stacking and it mentioned software call Helicon which is said was the standard for stacking software. I have been using Photoshop to date and, while it does a pretty good job, you do get some odd artifacts sometimes. I decided to download a trial of Helicon and see how it does.

I waited to use the trial until I had a bit of time available. The trial last 30 days but I wanted to make good use of it. Once I had installed it, I went through all of my focus stacks and ran through the software. It has a Lightroom plugin which made it easy enough to use. I found it was not so happy with some of my handheld stacks where alignment became an issue. Photoshop coped with that well. For the better planned shots, it worked a lot better. Overall, it seemed to do pretty well.

However, there was something that it struggled with. I had been playing with some shots of a memory card holder that I had shot when I had nothing better to do. Photoshop stacked them without any problem. The shots were in color but everything was either black or white. When Helicon tried stacking them, it introduced some strange purple coloration. I have no idea why it did this. It was almost like a chromatic aberration filter in reverse. I suspect there is a way to understand the more detailed settings and fix this but it was a weird outcome. Since I want something simple that basically works, this made me decide that buying the full version wasn’t worth it. I have already paid for Photoshop so I shall stick with that.