HDR test

[Tim Lookingbill]

Your post makes sense in theory. I still have to deal with the experimental evidence of more detail in the shadows of the overexposed shot. Yes, one shot will do. More data does seem to capture it better. I also have quite a bit of experience using the multishot ISO NR built in to the Sony camera. It takes several fast shots (no mirror flapping) putting them together into a single jpg output. in many outdoor scenes it was the only way to get all the data in to one shot.

So did this particular mountain landscape scene pass your HDR test with regard to seeing more detail in the shadows of the foreground trees and grassy fields?

I'm not seeing this in your posted final results, so I'm not sure what parameters you're defining as a passing HDR test.

You still haven't told us whether that is a daylight, morning, late afternoon or early evening scene so we know from the amount of light in the original scene if those shadows are suppose to be that dark and murky.

Why is your shot so dark and why don't you lift the shadow detail?

[Fine_Art]

The shot was at 18:40 about a month ago. The sun now sets here at 21:30, it was probably setting at 19:30 a month ago.

You can see the 100% crop of the treeline near the bottom of the first page. If you look at the snow, it is sharper in the darker shot. The trees are more defined in the lighter shot (+1.3ev). Neither shot had vibration blur. I conclude the lack of fine detail in the trees of the darker shot (normal exposure) is from variability at the pixel data. The de-bayer has a hard time deciding what is what so it is more a continuous mash, to use the scientific term.

[Fine_Art]

Here is a 100%crop from the other end of the same row, same pano. This time the in camera jpg just in case it was raw converter wierdness. Other people that are interested will of course test their own shots.

The +1.3ev shot has clearer tone definition in the dark trees. The 0ev shot has clearer snow (of course, a lot is not blown out). The sharpness of jpgs is less than raws. It's hard to say if there is a big difference in edge sharpness with the camera seeming to do USM..

[Fine_Art]

Here is a shot showing good snow tones. +.67ev for ETTR. This is at 50% after deconvolution so it is quite sharp.

Then look at the same frame in another section that shows the dark trees in direct sun AND in cloud shadow in the same crop. The shadowed section turns to mush. Deconvolution really has nothing to work with.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Here is a shot showing good snow tones. +.67ev for ETTR. This is at 50% after deconvolution so it is quite sharp.

Then look at the same frame in another section that shows the dark trees in direct sun AND in cloud shadow in the same crop. The shadowed section turns to mush. Deconvolution really has nothing to work with.

It appears your deconvolution sharpening did work in the shadows. It's just that you can't edit what you can't see.

So I took the liberties of assigning a 1.0 gamma sRGB profile to a 16 bit version of the dark trees screenshot which opened up a ton of detail and applied Levels to add back definition with an additional 20a/20r USM in Photoshop. As you can see in the posted image below the trees and foreground brush are quite sharp.

If I can bring out that much detail in an 8 bit, gamma encoded screengrab with no stacked exposure blending, imagine what you can do on the original Raw version. And BTW the highlights didn't get brighter except when I applied USM which sent them to 250RGB.

[bwana]

It appears your deconvolution sharpening did work in the shadows. It's just that you can't edit what you can't see.

So I took the liberties of assigning a 1.0 gamma sRGB profile to a 16 bit version of the dark trees screenshot which opened up a ton of detail and applied Levels to add back definition with an additional 20a/20r USM in Photoshop. As you can see in the posted image below the trees and foreground brush are quite sharp.

If I can bring out that much detail in an 8 bit, gamma encoded screengrab with no stacked exposure blending, imagine what you can do on the original Raw version. And BTW the highlights didn't get brighter except when I applied USM which sent them to 250RGB.

How did you get a 16 bit image from the jpegs he posted ?

Because I am ignorant, I don't know how to do this:
'Assign a 1.0 gamma sRGB profile'. Could u link me to tut? Or even tell me what that means- is it a custom made camera profile? ICC profile?

By applying levels, I assume all you did was adjust white and black points and not mess with the gray point or exposure?

Thank you for helping those of us who are slow.

[kirkt]

In PS, you can simply assign an existing profile to an image.  If you have an sRGB profile with gamma of 1.0, you just Edit > Assign Profile... and choose sRGB Gamma 1.0.

These ICC profiles exist and you can add them to your computer in the appropriate location to make PS aware of them.

If you want to use them in the way described above, assign the gamma 1.0 version to an image and then convert to a standard (i.e., gamma 2.2 sRGB, Adobe RGB ,etc) profile to preserve the changes the assignment step made to the tone of the image.

You can modulate the effect by adding an adjustment layer (any tone adjustment layer, like curves, levels, etc.) to the layer stack, setting the blend mode to multiply and playing with the opacity prior to converting to the standard gamma profile.

Here is a free PS panel that permits you to assign a "False Profile" of various gamma - when you download the panel, it should come with various gamma versions of typical profiles that one might use in image editing.

http://bigano.com/index.php/en/freeware/100-software/288-cs-extension-false-profile-2.html


If you open a JPEG (8 bit) you simply change the mode to 16bit - then you do all of the assign profile jazz.

kirk

[Tim Lookingbill]

How did you get a 16 bit image from the jpegs he posted ?

Converted to 16 bit mode in Photoshop. It's what happens when opening a jpeg in ACR/LR set to 16 bit automatically. Just a precaution to reduce artifacts from applying such a huge brightening edit.

Because I am ignorant, I don't know how to do this:
'Assign a 1.0 gamma sRGB profile'. Could u link me to tut? Or even tell me what that means- is it a custom made camera profile? ICC profile?

Created it in Photoshop's "CustomRGB" under Color Settings. Why would you need to know how to do this anyway? Are you having trouble seeing shadows in landscapes in your Raw converter as the OP?

By applying levels, I assume all you did was adjust white and black points and not mess with the gray point or exposure?

After first converting to AdobeRGB, applied 50-60 on the left top black slider, 1.50 middle slider in levels. Eyeballed left slider for each RGB.

I really didn't see the point of explaining since the OP is working on a Raw file in a converter that seems to be giving him trouble allowing him to see and edit all that data in the shadows at the same time alleviate his concerns over noise.

Thank you for helping those of us who are slow.

Been doing it online for over 10 years for free. And you're welcome.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

We are about to enter the third page of this thread and I am still confused as to what exactly is the issue we are debating? Are we debating anything? What was the problem, what are we agreeing or disagreeing about? Or we are just going in circles, stating the obvious and perhaps talking past each other?

[Tim Lookingbill]

We are about to enter the third page of this thread and I am still confused as to what exactly is the issue we are debating? Are we debating anything? What was the problem, what are we agreeing or disagreeing about? Or we are just going in circles, stating the obvious and perhaps talking past each other?

Something tells me you've already formulated your answers to those questions, Slobodan.

If you can't derive anything from this discussion, why do care? It's not all about you, ya' know.

[Vladimirovich]

Sometimes, all you need is a few extra stops in one end of the exposure to create the image you would like, with the room to make the edits you like.  The two basic routes are exposure fusion and HDR merge, with programs like ZeroNoise being a hybrid of the two.  More recently, this hybrid method has been implemented such that one may output a "noise free" DNG, making this data amenable to a raw workflow (see LumariverHDR, for example).  I know that Guillermo's approach included plans to write the output from ZeroNoise to DNG - LumariverHDR picks up where Guilllermo's approach left off.  In cases where you only need a few extra stops of good data, you can get away with 2 or 3 images at +/- 2EV for this hybrid method.

photoacute will output to DNG.

[Fine_Art]

We are about to enter the third page of this thread and I am still confused as to what exactly is the issue we are debating? Are we debating anything? What was the problem, what are we agreeing or disagreeing about? Or we are just going in circles, stating the obvious and perhaps talking past each other?

Maybe HDR was not the best title for the thread. I called it HDR from the program's multiframe merge menu item. They are typically called HDR merge.

I used several exposures with some exposed to provide high tonal bits to the shadow portion of the scene. Does this improve on the dark data capture designed into the camera? The D600 has one of the highest ratings for DR and for color on DxO. Maybe this is asking for a lot! I think I will take the advise of increasing to a full 1 to 2 stop bracket. As long as I chimp to make sure I have a good ETTR frame, the rest is gravy.

The limit on being able to see the captured tones is likely the monitor. I use a HDTV, calibrated, with fairly high contrast. Are the gradations more noticeable? Maybe. I can easily see the darkest tones on a step wedge at DPR. Maybe we need higher bit depth displays.

I have a pano row 22000 pixels by 3000 that looks very good.     I still have to work on the rest. Whether people want to waste the few seconds to capture extra frames is up to them. The data may not be valuable with today's output mediums, it may extend the usefulness of the shot into the future. Let me ask, when you look at shots you took with an early DSLR do you still see it as a good capture? Do you want to go back with your newer system to retake the scene?

The thread can end or we can discuss the value of large data capture.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

...Let me ask, when you look at shots you took with an early DSLR do you still see it as a good capture?...

They are as good as it gets. Actually, they are, like good wine, even getting better with age. Not because captured photons alter their state with time, but because RAW processing has made huge advances, together with our ability to use them more effectively. I am often surprised how good my old Canon 20D files are in Lightroom 5.

[Tim Lookingbill]

I used several exposures with some exposed to provide high tonal bits to the shadow portion of the scene. Does this improve on the dark data capture designed into the camera?

Those shadow tones will suffer more by their distance, resolution and lens accutance than from theoretical tonal bits captured by stacking multi-bracketed exposures. What I saw editing your screengrab indicates to me you've captured more than the eyes could see at that scene. I can also say that of my 2006 Pentax 6MP DSLR capturing at lesser distances. But currently I'm satisfied with my prints.

Resolution aids far more at capturing all those tiny grass strands and pine tree leaves 100's of feet away in your pano landscape as long as the lens can sharply map it to the sensor. You may have enough pixels to uprez that pano to print to fill a 25ft. wide wall after you're through. The issue now is the viewer will have to stand way back about 25ft just to take it all in. So what's the point in capturing extra data that can't be seen even in a print? Don't you feel it's overkill with all this work on top of your camera's advanced resolution/DR capture capability?

Let me ask, when you look at shots you took with an early DSLR do you still see it as a good capture? Do you want to go back with your newer system to retake the scene?

Sure, I'ld like to be able to afford a newer and more advanced camera system, but if I had that system, I certainly wouldn't go to your lengths at producing a pano and instead let the camera do most of the work. But that's my POV.

[Fine_Art]

The 85 on the 6016 pixel wide sensor gives you about 4x 20/20 vision. The 21494x2816 pano row is about 90 degrees wide at 4x magnification compared to being there with 20/20 vision. If you remember the old "Is it live or is it Memorex?" ads, Memorex or live, are both poor substitutes for this image.