Category Archives: technique

HDR for Snapshots

While you always want to produce great photographs, sometimes you are just getting snapshots to remind you of places that you have visited. This blog is full of such shots that will never go anywhere further. One of the shortcomings of those shots is that they are taken at a time of day that is not ideal. If I am setting out on a photo trip, I can go at the time that suits the lighting. If we are visiting somewhere on our travels, I get the shots that are available at that time. That often means harsh lighting.

Here I have started to take a lesson from my friend Hayman. He was talking about using HDR to make something more interesting from an otherwise unflattering lighting situation. Consequently, I have been making a lot more use of HDR on my travels. While early processing techniques for HDR were focused more on the grungy style, the latest developments allow you to produce an image that is a lot more natural looking and is far closer to what you recall of the view when you were there.

When trying to provide a more interesting shot for sharing with someone who wasn’t there, this is a good option. The ability of raw processing to get a lot more out of a shot has certainly increased the potential of a single shot. However, as the contrast ratio gets larger, the limits of a single shot become apparent. An HDR image can cope with this situation a lot better.

I am now using the tone mapping in Adobe Camera Raw to work on the 32 bit file once Photoshop has created it. Then, once it is back in Lightroom, I can use the same sliders to further work on it. (I am currently unsure about how well the edits in ACR show up in Lightroom as I seem to lose some of the effects but will figure that out in due course.). The resulting images are still a little less than real but part of the purpose is to show more of the shot than the light would naturally have given.

The examples below are a bit of a sample. One of the middle range image as it was without any significant work. Next comes an edit in Lightroom to bring out a lot of the shot. The last is the HDR effort. Hopefully it shows the various results possible for the same basic shot. Interestingly, if the light is not totally harsh, the ability to get more out of a RAW file is not far short of what the HDR gives. It has less flexibility and is more susceptible to halos but it is a close second.

Red Flag Night Launch

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This is an example of what worked and what might have been. After night fell at Red Flag, we headed up to the far end of the base where you are looking down towards the runways and the city of Las Vegas is in the background. Here the jets are departing over your head for the night mission. Most of them are sufficiently high and fast to cancel afterburner before they reach you. However, the B-1s stay in burner for a lot longer. Getting a shot of them in the dark – or more accurately, a shot of their engine exhausts – was the aim o the game.

They really look very cool as they blast off the runway and head towards you. It is pretty dark so you have the lenses wide open and the ISO cranked up very high. Even then, the shutter speed is low so it is a bit hit or miss. I did get a few that came out pretty nicely. Meanwhile, I had been trying to get a series of shots with a second camera to make into a time-lapse. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought a cable release with me. I was trying to bodge together something to keep the shutter depressed. It would work for a while and then I would have to try again. The result of this is that I was progressively moving the camera. No tripod for this effort. It was resting on the roof of the car! The resulting time lapse is shorter than I would like and obviously not very good but I include it below just so you can see what I was trying for. Another time perhaps. Meanwhile, the following week, Chris went back and had a better planned go. I think his results were far better.

http://youtu.be/UVP8Py1gnZw

Night Star Trails

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My buddy Paul was in town and we had a day of shooting and exploring planned. However, we wanted to have a go at star trails in the evening as well. Consequently, we set up at Schellville as the sun went down to shoot the trails around the Douglas DST parked on the field. I set up two cameras at different angles and with different lenses to try and maximize what I got. The sun was still going down when I started so the exposure was varying a bit more than I was prepared for but a little tweaking in post got things back together. We also did some light painting on the airframe in a couple of frames to make the scene pop a bit more.

The biggest thing I learned during this was to start when it is darker and to take mosquito protection. I got badly bitten during the early part of the shoot and the bites reacted quite severely! Also, doing this in the winter so you don’t have to wait so late for it to get dark might also be a good plan. However, it went reasonably well and I have a few things I will know to do differently next time. I might also try a trail on one camera and a time lapse on the other.

Negative Scanning

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I have a lot of negatives and transparencies from my days of shooting film and various of them have been scanned at times either for projects or just because I wanted to have them as part of my digital library. For a long time, I have made use of a Minolta Scan Dual III film scanner. While it doesn’t appear to like modern operating systems, a few tweaks to the config files make it run with Windows 7. However, it is not a totally smooth process and the scanner has a habit of hanging at odd times which requires a lot of fiddling to recover.

When I built my latest computer, I didn’t bother to install the drivers and the box is sitting on a shelf. I was figuring I would come back to it if I needed to. Recently, I needed to scan a single strip of film and wondered whether I had an alternative. I do have a flatbed scanner that has a film scanning capability. I had previously dismissed flatbeds for film scanning since they were seen to be inferior to dedicated film scanners. However, my film scanner was pretty old and gave me mixed results and my flatbed is relatively new. Therefore, I figured I ought to give it a go.

First, the limitations. It will scan a strip of film of shots but you have to move a small device between each shot between scans. No scanning a full holder of film or slides. Big scanning jobs are therefore a lot less practical. As for the image quality, I have yet to find a way to have much control. A preview scan is done but if it comes out with a poor exposure, for example, I have yet to find a way to adjust it. The dedicated film scanner allows all sorts of tweaking. Then there is the speed. If I go for the highest resolution, the scans take many minutes for each exposure. I can wander off and do something else but, if you have more than a couple of images to scan, this is a slow and inefficient process

As for the output quality, it is a mixed bag. The scans are not too bad. Despite the lack of control, if the original is a straightforward image, it comes out okay. Large areas of a similar color such as a sky are subject to banding. I suspect this is a problem all of the time but most pronounced on large areas of one color.

So, am I going to make do or is the film scanner going to be resurrected? I think I will get it back off the shelf. The time and quality issues are sufficient to make the flatbed not helpful except for odd individual scans. It does a nice job on documents but that is it. Now I shall have to find a location for the film scanner and sort out the config files again.

Adobe Camera Raw and Video

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Regular readers will be familiar with my gradual experimentation with video and video editing. In the early days of my playing with video, I discovered just how sensitive video is to exposure errors. The sort of thing that could be easily corrected in post on a raw still file were not so easily dealt with in video that was already compressed when it came out of the camera. Avoiding over exposure was one thing to do which is slightly different to shooting aircraft against a bright sky when having enough shadow detail on the aircraft is important and the sky can be recovered a bit to give a more pleasing outcome. For video this doesn’t work as well but having less shadow detail doesn’t seem to matter with motion as much as it does for stills.

Another change I made was to go with a development profile in the camera that is a lot “flatter”. This was something I read about on various blogs in that it gives the editor more to work with when grading the video later. This is certainly true but it means you definitely have to do some work in post to get the image back to something more pleasing.

I never cared for the editing tools in my old video editing application since they were weak and not as intuitive as what I was used to in Photoshop/Lightroom. Consequently, I embraced video editing in Photoshop when it became a better developed feature. However, I hadn’t found it as easy as I had hoped to get the right effect using levels and curves adjustments. Then it struck me (why it took so long when everyone else must have been doing this) that Camera Raw is the tool that combines all the things I need to enhance the video output.

I have now been using it on a couple of projects and I have to say it works very well. You have to convert the layer to a smart object first and then apply Camera Raw as a filter. If you don’t convert it, the filter only applies to the frame you are looking at and that is no use. However, one lesson I have learned is to work out the other parts of your edit first and leave this step to last. The rendering of the video with the filters applied is a huge amount slower. Short videos that would previously have rendered out in a minute or two may now take over an hour. This also applies to running through the video to make your edits. The real time rendering is lost. I suppose that you will be using a proper video editing suite if you do this on a daily basis so the use of Photoshop is moving away from its core role. However, it suits me to do so. Therefore, make all of the edits you need first and when you are happy with the final composition, convert to smart objects and filter away. Just remember that the conversion gets rid of transitions so those will have to be put back in again but that doesn’t cause me any problems. Then hit render and go and do something else. While Photoshop will do many things in the background, video rendering takes it over and you can’t work on another project while it works in the background so go off and write a blog post. That’s what I am doing right now!

Funky Cloud Processing

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Part of a run back into Oakland recently came across the bay but it was unfortunately covered in cloud. However, the cloud was sitting in very distinct locations with a clear edge as you headed down the bay and a similar edge near the shoreline on the Oakland side. Since we were not high above it, this looked pretty interesting. Even as I photographed it, I figured the shots would need something a bit different when I got around to processing them. Having a more contrasty look seemed the best bet and a black and white conversion also seemed likely. That is what I went with and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. See what you think.

Flying Out of The Bay Area

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I have been traveling a reasonable amount recently and on one of my trips we took off from Oakland and flew out over San Francisco Bay, past the city and the Golden Gate and up to the north. The first time, I had my camera with me but it was in my bag in the overhead locker. My phone was still to hand of course so I grabbed a few pictures with that. They were passable but nothing special. I also was fighting some reflections given the time of day and the position of the sun.

When I came to make the same trip again, I planned ahead and did two things. One was to have my camera with me rather than in the overhead and the other was to bring the Lens Skirt to try and cut down on the reflection issues. My methodology for having the camera to hand involves yet another camera bag but I shall leave the description of that to another post.

I should point out that on the first outing, I got interesting pictures both out and back. The second time, the weather was not so cooperative. On the outbound leg, the Golden Gate was shrouded in fog with the bridge just poking out of the top of the clouds. On the return leg, most of the bay was shrouded in cloud so the views of Oakland that I had got with my phone were obscured. Here is a selection of the shots. I will be making this trip again no doubt so will probably try and get a better selection. Shooting out of airplane windows is problematic and not usually the source of great images but airliners do get you in places that have views that are unusual and worth recording, even if they are not going to be published.

SFO Night Approach Time Lapse

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Many moons ago (pun intended), my buddy Paul was visiting and we decided to have a go at night light trails at SFO. However, we had not come well equipped so headed to Best Buy to pick up cheap tripods. They were very cheap and performed as might be expected. However, with Paul coming back, we decided to have a second go at this and to prepare properly this time. We also scoped out some locations that might be suitable to get good angles on SFO.

Two things conspired against us this time. First, SFO is having runway upgrades installed so the pair of 28 runways are the only ones in use. This cuts down on the possible angles for a while. Second, the great weather forecast turned out to include some low cloud over the location we had scouted out. The aircraft rapidly disappeared from view as they climbed. (It later turned out that they were still in the clear but above the thin layer of cloud which we were under.)

We went with a plan B and found a location along the lake-shore that would provide an alternative. It was not as good but it did work. I had actually brought a spare tripod in case Paul didn’t have his so I set up two cameras. One was running long exposures that I intended to blend together to get light trails. The other I point out onto the approach which was quite busy at that point and take a lot of shorter exposures for creating a time lapse. The blend is above and the time lapse video is below. Let’s hope for better weather next time. I shall also remember that warm weather does not include after sunset and bring something a bit ticker to wear!

HDR Panoramas

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Another one of my processing technique posts today. For those of you interested in pictures of places, today will probably be one you pass on. You have been warned. This is about my first venture into the realm of HDR panoramas. I know at least one of you who knows exactly how to do this sort of thing and does it on a regular basis. You also will probably skip the rest of the post. However, you have some specialized tools for doing the job and I am playing with Lightroom and Photoshop so here is how it goes.

My initial thought having taken the shots was which order to carry out the processing. HDR first or pano first. I concluded that it had to be pano first. All of the pano exposures were consistent and would stitch properly while I wasn’t convinced that each of the pano frames would be consistent if I had done the HDR blending first. However, this left me with a second concern. Would the pano merge produce images that would align for the HDR merge. I use the pano tools built into Photoshop and, while I select the algorithm it uses, I did not have confidence that it would produce an identical alignment for each set of exposures. However, this was the route I tried.

Stitching the panos was straightforward enough. I created each of them from Lightroom and ended up with five panos with differing exposures. At this point I could have taken them directly to HDR Pro within Photoshop but, since I wanted everything to end up in the Lightroom catalog, I decided to save the files and go to HDR Pro from there.

Here I encountered my first hiccup. As expected, the panos produced were not identical. There were very close but not identical. HDR Pro only works on files that are the same dimensions. I imagine some more specialized HDR applications might be able to handle this but I was stuck with Photoshop. Since the panos were thousands of pixels across and only a few pixels different, I opened them back up in Photoshop and changed the canvas size to be identical in each case. HDR Pro is able to manage alignment of slightly misaligned shots anyway so I wanted worried about the positioning. Also, with such small changes in dimensions, I didn’t fear that I would have distortion.

With this change made, Photoshop went to work and created the HDR file. Amazingly, it worked just fine. I didn’t have any problems with the files being distorted relative to each other and it did a great job of blending them. All that was left was to crop everything in to clear up the empty corners from the pano creation (I didn’t get rid of those in the first instance since I was trying to keep the pano files identical in size and alignment) and then a few tweaks back in Lightroom had the job finished. I was pretty pleased with how it worked and, with the experience of this time, should be able to turn them around quite quickly next time.

Boeing 777-300ER Main Gear

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When Boeing launched the 777-300ER, they took the stretched fuselage of the 777-300, a model that didn’t sell particularly well and married it to the updated wing that made use of the fuel capacity of the outboard portion of the wing that had been left when the original concept of a folding wing was contemplated. The increased the weights of the jet, added far more powerful engines and, with the increased fuel capacity, came up with a winning formula that has done a very effective job of killing off the 747.

One problem that they had to deal with during development was runway length requirements for takeoff. Even with the bigger engines, the long fuselage limited rotation angles at takeoff and meant a higher takeoff speed was required which meant a longer runway requirement. Boeing came up with an interesting solution (after dumping some slightly more curious ideas). The main gear on the 777 has a triple axle bogie. Previously this had rotated about the pin attaching it to the main gear leg. Boeing’s solution was to lock the bogie level during takeoff.

The result of this is to have the rotation of the jet at takeoff to take place around the rear wheels of the bogie rather than the gear leg pin. The slight aft movement of the rotation point allows the aircraft to rotate slightly more nose up and gain a greater angle of attack. This gives slightly more lift for a given speed. This means an earlier takeoff and a shorter runway requirement.

I have tried many times to witness this at work. First, it happens pretty quickly. Second, I am often in a poor position to see the rotation point. Recently I was at SFO to pick up some people. I was getting a few shots prior to their flight arriving and a Singapore 777-300ER was taking off. The rotation point is quite far away (although, if you are in the terminal, you might have a good view) and the heat haze is a problem. However, I decided to get a sequence of shots anyway. Now, how to use them.

Heat haze is crappy on stills but less of an issue with moving images so I decided to animate the sequence. I imported all of the shots into Photoshop as layers in a single document via Lightroom. The hardest part was aligning them. I started at the bottom layer and then progressively made each layer above visible. I then changed the latest top layer blend mode to difference. This makes aligning them a lot easier since everything is black unless it is different. I was focused on the gear so used that as the reference as the fuselage rotated. Once each layer was in place, I changed the blend mode back to normal and moved to the next layer up.

Once they were all aligned, I used the animation timeline to make frames from each layer (and reversed the order since every time I do this they seem to be the wrong way around). Then I could crop in to get the overall view I was after and save the file. A Save for Web allows the generation of the animated GIF and we are done. The image at the top is the final result. It does allow you to see a bit of what is going on if you look closely although it is still a bit hard given the distance, the angle to the ground and the heat haze. I guess I will have to find a location closer next time.