Posts in Category: Lightroom
4/18/2009
Dunnattor Castle
Our host in Aberdeen put us on to this castle, as it would be on our way when we left, so we watched for the signs as drove down the east coast of Scotland in the morning. It was well signed but still not easy to find, being well off the main road. And, of course, when we got there it was raining. Not hard but hard enough to make it a dampish walk the quarter mile or so from the car park, protecting the camera all the way. Ah, but what a beautiful place. Dramatic. Rushing streams pouring down over moss covered cliffs. Straight drops to the gray sea, and the Castle ruins standing alone on a promontory so deeply carved it was all but an island. Add the brooding sky and a band of light along horizon where the storm broke and you had the makings of quite a scene. Unfortunately you also had a very difficult photographic challenge. The moss and turf was so dark, and the horizon so bright, with the castle pushed right up against it. Lots of water in the air (not to mention on the lens if not careful) sucking the contrast out of any distance. Still, you have to try. I took maybe thirty different shots, quick grabs when I whipped the camera out, got the shot off, and the camera back in its bag before it got too wet.
Of course, I would like to get back here with more time and better weather. I would like to spend a day, or a week, or a year photographing this scenery…but, in fact, I may never get another chance at this landscape. The pictures I took that day in the rain may be my only images of this place. If so, let it be so, and I will make the most of the shots I managed to get.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F4.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
This shot required a lot more post processing than I normally use. I spent a good ten minutes on it. First a Graduated Filter effect from the top down to the horizon to darken the sky. 2) graduated filter effect from the bottom up to brighten the foreground and add contrast. 3) Adjustment brush applied to the two foreground castle structures, where I applied some exposure and brightness to lighten, along with some added contrast and some sharpening. 4) a second adjustment brush along the length of the low building to pull back the brightness (since at flat wall stood out too much). 5) a third adjustment brush along the bright horizon to pull back the exposure there a little. 6) general increased Vibrance and Clarity, and the Landscape sharpen preset. 6) moved the black point to the right to deepen the colors and added a bit of extra contrast to the whole image. 7)the yellow had become too bright with the exposure adjustments, so I pulled back the saturation of the yellow band in the HSL panel. 8) finally, I used the mouse selection tool in the HSL panel to select the gray of the water and darken it (luminance control).
Again, all of this manipulation is only to bring the image back to something like what I saw with my eye.
From Scotland.
4/16/2009
Evening River
We arrived in Drum, just north of Aberdeen Scotland, late in the day, or early in the long Scottish evening. We were staying with a friend of my friend the driver on this adventure, who had a house facing the North Sea across agricultural fields. We drove out to this river, a quiet spot, looking for wrens. This was taken from a footbridge across the river. The light was that glooming which you only really get in the far north in summer, when the sun never goes far below the horizon, even late in the evening. If you have been there, you know that the light is warm, despite the late hour. The problem is that the camera does not see the light as warm. Then too, with the generally low light levels, if you expose for the foreground, the sky goes white. Not what you want.
Actually, this shot would have been impossible without the H50s built in stabilization. The low light brought the shutter speed down to 1/6 of a second…much longer than I should have been able to hand hold.
And, as always, but especially on this trip, I was working against time, out with other folks who were not their to see the scenery, and I did not want to keep them waiting while I played with exposure. Just one shot, on Programed Auto. Which is, of course, where Lightroom comes in.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F4.0 @ 1/6th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I used two graduated filters, one pulled down from the top to darken the sky, and one pulled up from the bottom to reduce the brightness there as well, and to increase contrast. Then I went to the HSL panel and did some selective brightening of specific colors. I placed the HSL tool over the purple reeds and slide it up to increase the luminance. I did the same over the sandy hill in the background. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Landscape sharpen. A bit of Luminance Noise Reduction to counter the mottling caused by the selective color brightness changes.
The result is something very close to what I saw that night…certainly much closer than the original file, which I include here for reference.
From Scotland.
Original file:
The original, resized fresh from the camera
4/14/2009
Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness
I took this, and other pics of Urquhart Castle literally between raindrops. I had my hand and hat shielding the camera the whole time, wondering just how wet I could get it before something shorted out and I fired the camera. We were considerably damp by the time we got back to the car.
And of course, finding a view from the parking lot was next to impossible. They have planted hedges along the edge, on purpose one suspects, to discourage casual enjoyment of the grounds. If you want the view they expect you to pay the fee and walk down to the castle. We had no time, and were not so inclined considering the weather. So I was scrambling to get something, anything, worth taking home here.
Still, it is a magnificent vista, out over Loch Ness and the Castle, and I did find a gap in the hedge deep enough so that I could tip the LCD out and hold the camera high and get a few views. Next time I will pay the fee (if there is a next time).
Sony DSC H50 at about 80mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/160th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto. I tipped the camera up to read more sky than foregound, used the exposure lock, and reframed.
Still, it needed some help in Lightroom. Graduated filter from the top over the top third of the image to darken the sky to its remembered bleak rainy self, and graduated filter from the bottom over the whole image to brighten and increase contrast. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Landscape sharpen preset. I also touched the blackpoint slightly to the right to deepen the colors and did a minor color temperature adjustment to tame the yellow that brightening the image brought out.
From Scotland.
4/13/2009
A Valley on Skye
Another shot from the few hours I spent on Skye coming back from the Hebrides. Typical weather and scenery from what I saw, though I am certain (pretty sure) they have brighter days. Every shot in this light was an exposure challenge.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide. F4.0 @ 1/80th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto
In Lightroom, my usual Presence adjustments (plus Clarity and Vibrance). On the first pass I used Recovery for the sky and moderate fill light for the foreground, but on a second pass, I used the Graduated Filter effects to darken the sky (pulled down from the top) and to brighten and increase contrast in the foreground (pulled up from the bottom). I also used the Adjustment brush to tone down the brightness of the light areas of the clouds.
From Scotland.
4/11/2009
Lichen among the Moss
I did go out yesterday in better light and rework the crocus…but I will save one of those for tomorrow. Today we have a shot from later in the day, from a walk around the never fails me trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. It is only a mile, but I find something interesting to photograph on every visit.
The moss this early spring is the brightest thing in the forest, so vibrantly green and lush that it has to draw the eye. This shot is right down at moss level, with a cluster of lichen breaking though for interest. I left enough background to, hopefully, supply some scale. This is tiny, tiny stuff shot at the closest 2 cm macro of the H50…which is one of the things I really love about this camera (I don’t love everything about it…just enough to keep me carrying it).
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/125 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I used a graduated filter pulled up from the bottom to pop up the foreground with added clarity and contrast. You could not apply the kinds of levels I used here in standard processing, or to any area without a lot of detail, but as a graduated filter over appropriate areas of the image it gives a pseudo-hdr effect. After applying it I always find I have to increase the brightness of the whole image. That is in addition to my normal Presence adjustments for this camera, plus both Clarity and Vibrance applied globally and the Sharpen portrait preset.
I always feel a need to remind readers that while the above sounds like a lot of processing, Lightroom makes it easy (you can see your effects applied in real time) and fast (all of that took only about 2 minutes, start to finish).
From Rachel Carson Seasons.
4/10/2009
Crocus Impression
Interesting story. I took some shots of these newly opened Crocus for a test of two compact HD video cameras I did for P&S Landscape (here) and posted them to Flickr for convenience in placing them in my blog. On Flickr they immediately began to draw comments. So I had to go out, end of the day, with my real camera and take some shots. Clearly.
In pushing for greatest depth of field, I used Program Shift to move the auto exposure to smallest possible aperture, and ended up with some pretty slow shutter speeds. Anyway, I took some really close ups of the insides of the flowers, as in leading petals touching the lens. They did not work for me as straight on photographs so I tried some Lightroom magic to enhance the strangeness of them. I will reshoot some this morning without touching the Program Shift and see what I get. In the meantime, this slightly unreal, manipulated image stands on its own as what it is: an impression of Crocus.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F5.0 @ 1/30th @ ISO 100. Program Shifted for smallest aperture.
In Lightroom, some Recovery, and more than usual amounts of Clarity and especially Vibrance to push the look over the edge of reality. Landscape sharpen preset. But then I went in with the color selective HSL (hue, saturation, and luminance) controls and altered the luminance of specific colors. In Lightroom you have a color selection tool that you can place over the image. Clicking the mouse and dragging up or down over a specific color in the image changes the HSL (whichever you have set, luminance in this case) values on the fly, as you watch. Lightroom does all the calculations and changes whatever color bands it needs, multiple bands most generally, to change just the color that was under your tool when you clicked the mouse. It is magical. By selecting the orange of the stamens and sliding the mouse up, I brightened just that orange, making the stamens pop out of the image. Then I selected the purple of the petal veins and slid the mouse down to darken that color and increase the contrast between it and the rest of the petals. The result is a striking, if somewhat unreal, image.
From Around Home.
Here is a more straight on image of the same flowers.
A bit more real...but better?
4/9/2009
Pioneers of Spring
On my way out to do some new product testing yesterday I discovered these little guys springing up in the yard. At last. We still have isolated patches of snow around.
I took a very low angle, with the camera resting on my hands and my hands on the ground, using the flip out LCD of the H50. The problem was eliminating distractions in the background, and, even so, the background was already in sun, while the flowers were shade, lit by a stray shaft of extreme side light. Tricky.
I like the way the light on the flowers picks up the texture of the folded petals, and of course the shapes and colors of these brave spring pioneers.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro mode (almost touching the forward flower). F4.0 @ 1/200 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I had to deal with the bright background. Recovery helped but not enough. I used a Graduated Filter drawn in from the upper left toward the flowers at an angle, and then the Adjustment Brush to mask an area behind the flowers on the right. For both I reduced exposure. That made the blue of the sky way too intense, so I also reduced saturation for both the Graduated Filter and the Adjustment Brush mask. Then the usual Vibrance and Clarity settings, and the Sharpen portrait preset.
From Around Home.
4/1/2009
I should probably have something trickier for April Fools Day, but I don’t. Just another typical Hebrides building. This time a round house. The original dwellers on the Hebrides were a people who built round houses, and you still see the remains of these round structures all over the islands, though not as houses. This was probably a sheep shelter before it was rebuilt and converted into a studio/display room for traditional wool arts. Of course it is the grandeur of the setting as much as the structure itself that makes the image.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F5.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
This required (or at least received) similar treatment to yesterdays image. Double graduated filters, from the top to darken, and from the bottom to lighten and increase contrast for the hyper-detailed effect. And then my usual Presence adjustments (Clarity and Vibrance) and the Landscape sharpen preset.
From Scotland.
And here is a view of the inside as it is today.
3/31/2009
Traditional Hebrides Housing (fully modernized)
We had to look long and hard for a traditional Hebrides black house, and then the only ones we could find that were not ruins (and fully a third of the modern homes still have a black house ruin off to one side or behind) were fully modernized. I mean, windows? This example, now fashionably whitewashed and groomed, was just by the airfield and probably represented the retirement home of someone who served there. Still, character shows.
Given the nature of the Hebrides roads (which I have mentioned before are one way…with pullouts for meeting oncoming traffic every so often…and those only on the major arteries) we were not able to do more than jump out of the car while it was still running in the lane and grab a shot. Lighting was not ideal with that bright sky looming up behind and little light on the foreground. Worse, the H50 suffers from unpredictable chromatic aberration. Purple and green fringes pop up at sharp, high contrast intersections in the image at certain settings of the zoom and in certain situations. I have never been able to track exactly what settings of the zoom and what situations, but this was one of them. Green fringes were readily apparent in a medium sized print or at normal screen resolution. Fortunately Lightroom has one of the best Chromatic Aberration tools I have ever seen.
Sony DSC H50 at about 60mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, besides fixing the CA, I used two graduated filter efffects, one from the bottom to increase both exposure and contrast, and one from the top to darken the sky. The one from the bottom is of interest in that I slid a good portion of the darkest section of the filter off the bottom of the image, to give a more subtle graduation to the exposure increase. As usual with the H50, I added Presence (Clarity and Vibrance) and used the Sharpen landscapes preset.
From Scotland.
3/30/2009
Ben More with Thistles (so Scotish!)
I looked for this shot every day in Scotland. Thistles with view. A few days I even found it. Ben More, with its cap of clouds was an irresistible subject anyway. This was taken at the same stop as 3/21/2009. and under the same circumstances, right over top of the rubbish tip. For this one I used Program Shift to select the smallest aperture I could (smallest the camera allows, F8) for maximum depth of field and shot form further back from the thistles, so I do have both the foreground interest and the mountain pretty much in focus. Post processing is the rest of the story. See below.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). F8.0 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto with Program Shift.
In Lightroom, I applied some Fill Light and Recovery…Recovery for the sky and clouds, Fill Light for the foreground, but even with my usual Presence boost (Vibrance and Clarity) it left the foreground flat (the foreground was cloud shadowed anyway). Even moving the black point right did not give it the pop I was after. I tried a Graduated filter effect from the bottom but that looked unnatural, so I went in with the Adjustment brush and masked the foreground. Using the mask I boosted exposure, added even more Clarity, and increased contrast for an almost HDR effect.
From Scotland.