Best filters for landscapes ?

[Bazinga]

Very easy in LR : capture for the highlights, and then bring back the shadows (Fill Light + Black). No gory HDR look involved (but as with any treatment or use of filter you have to do it right), and even with older cameras you still can bring back about 3 more stops of DR (as said Guillermo Luijk in the pother thread, it's more 6 stops with the best and last cameras).
If this margin is still not enough, then it's the GradND or a second capture and blending (go see ZeroNoise eg) or some other method as the stacking suggested in the other thread.

I'm surprised at your comment about '3 more stops', which is more than a sensor's exposure latitude, from what I know. Let alone "6 or more" stops.. I would really want to see proper scientific backing of that quote. If exposure latitude is 6 or more stops, then why is there HDR technique at all? Shouldn't a sensor be able to just capture all those glorious details? And here I'm not talking about a possibility to make 2 shots 3 or 6 stops apart (even though then there will be no overlap in exposure between the two).

As for 'gory' HDR.. I guess it depends on how you do it and to what extent one goes when doing HDR. It's all very personal and some HDR is done in a way that one would have hard time telling it's not a single frame shot (unless that one is a very experienced photographer).

[NikoJorj]

Let alone "6 or more" stops..

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=49200.msg405505#msg405505
Note that exposure latitude is only on the shadow side... Saturation is a harder wall on the HL side than noise in the shadows.

[Lonnie Utah]

Cokin filters aren't very high quality.  Lee or Singhray are higher quality. Lee are hard to get, not sure about singhray.

 I use both filters and photoshop, and sometimes even both on the same image, but getting most of everything right with filters, then using bracketed exposures to pull detail back in areas where the filters killed it because the horizon wasn't straight.

Wayne,

I'd love it if Pixels started carrying the Singh-rays...

L

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi!

What latitude is depends on a lot of factors. The tonal range of the scene, the dynamic range of the sensor and how much noise you are willing to expect.

If you expose correctly to the right, latitude for overexposure is zero and you are using the sensor optimally. Exposing higher, highlight detail is lost. Exposing less reduces the amount of detail in the darks we can extract.

Modern DSLRs seem to have a DR (technical term) of about 12 stops. But the definition of DR is (maximum signal)/(SNR=1). SNR=1 (Signal Noise Ratio equals one) is the normally used figure in signal processing, but may be far to noisy for shadow detail.

The article here indicates how much information we can extract from a single image:

http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/61-hdr-tone-mapping-on-ordinary-image

Further discussion about the processing is here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=60082.msg490533#msg490533

Something very similar can be done in Lightroom 4 with just three klicks:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=61027.msg492127#msg492127
Best regards
Erik



Best regards
Erik

I'm surprised at your comment about '3 more stops', which is more than a sensor's exposure latitude, from what I know. Let alone "6 or more" stops.. I would really want to see proper scientific backing of that quote. If exposure latitude is 6 or more stops, then why is there HDR technique at all? Shouldn't a sensor be able to just capture all those glorious details? And here I'm not talking about a possibility to make 2 shots 3 or 6 stops apart (even though then there will be no overlap in exposure between the two).

As for 'gory' HDR.. I guess it depends on how you do it and to what extent one goes when doing HDR. It's all very personal and some HDR is done in a way that one would have hard time telling it's not a single frame shot (unless that one is a very experienced photographer).