Monthly Archives: August 2010
8/11/2010
Saint Anne’s Point
iPhone 4 HDR. St. Anne’s point is photogenic from almost any angle. Here from the back, along the coast on Cape Arundel. The Drama of the sky and sun breaking through clouds (including the rays), the strong silhouetting of the buildings against the light, the detail of stony beach and even the rail of the stair…and then the light on the water, produced, to my eye, a powerful image.
Captured and processed completely on the iPhone. Two exposures merged in Pro HDR. I tried my usual Levels adjustment and sharpening in PhotoGene, but then went back to the original HDR with PerfectPhoto for a different set of tools. Increased Gamma, lightened shaddows, increased contrast, and warmed the color temperature just slightly. Uploaded with SmugShot.
From iPhone4 HDR and Pano.
8/10/2010
Marsh Light
Another shot from my Saturday outing, and another Canon SX20IS and Photomatix HDR. Two shots.
Just a very quiet domestic scene with a touch of wild in the marsh in the foreground, and some drama in the clouds. Or so I hope. The tension between the elements is of interest to me.
From a technical standpoint, the trick was to take both shots with no cars visible on the busy road that passes between the house and barn…and of course I was trying to do this handheld. A tripod would make HDR much easier…but then I’d have to carry the tripod. 
Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. 1) 1250th @ f7.1 @ ISO 80, 2) 1/400th @ f4 @ ISO 80. Exposure compensation dial used to change the exposure by eye for the clouds and landscape.
In Photomatix, enhanced detail, tone mapping blend, with the settings tweaked by eye for the desired result. I am still very much learning to use Photomatix.
In Lightroom, a touch of Fill Light and Blackpoint to the right, added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen narrow edges preset. Cropped at the top to constrain the sky.
From Around Home 2010.
8/9/2010
Summer Morning: River Meets the Sea
Saturday morning I headed out to my favorite birding and digiscoping spot, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where it crosses Route 9 by the Mousam River bridge. It was one of those clear, cool, summer mornings after days of heat, with bright sun and broken cloud cover and I was hoping to do some more iPhone HDR experimentation. When I got out of the car to set up my scope, I realized that my iPhone was back home on the charger. No HDR today!
But then, as I mounted my digiscoping camera and walked in toward the marsh I was thinking…all I am really doing with the iPhone is taking two exposures, one for bright (sky generally) and one for dark (foreground landscape generally). I could do that with my SX20IS…and actually it might even be a bit easier since I could use the exposure compensation dial…or even the auto exposure bracket built into the camera.
All the magic is in the software. Maybe I could download the images to the iPhone and use Pro HDR to combine them…or, failing that…surely there must be some software available to do it on the laptop. I just got an upgrade notice from Adobe on PhotoShop Elements 8…and didn’t that mention some kind of HDR?
So I took a bunch of experimental images using both the exposure compensation dial, judging exposure by eye, and auto bracket. Auto bracket on the SX20IS does three exposures, 1EV either side of center (you can shift the center point along the scale but you can not increase the range). By eye, I judged 1 EV to be too little compensation for the sky with clouds, though about right for the landscape, and, indeed that’s how it worked out when I came to process the images.
Back home, I found that even if I downloaded the images to the iPhone, they were just too large for Pro HDR to handle (not surprising since Pro HDR expected maximum 5mp images form the iPhone camera). Plan B.
I always try to find a free program first, and I downloaded what looked like the best of then. No. Did not work. So, after some more research, I downloaded the trial version of Photomatix Lite and gave that a try. Excellent. As easy as Pro HDR on the iPhone, and in “enhanced detail: tone mapping mode” it provides a very similar set of adjustments, and, with care, similar results. Best of all, it does the auto alignment of the images just as Pro HDR does, which makes shooting HDR handheld possible. I bought it.
And after all that…the image for today is my first Photomatix HDR. I still find that Pro HDR produces more natural results as its default, but you can achieve the same results with Photomatix with some tweaking of the controls. On the other hand, it is possible in Photomatix to do the massively overblown HDR thing too. I am not tempted that way, but I can understand the temptation.
I took the Photomatix processed HDR into Lightroom and made final adjustments…Blackpoint right, some added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset.
So, one more tool…one more set of imaging possibilities to bring to the landscape.
8/8/2010
Evening Sun on the Haunted House
Happy Sunday!
This is another iPhone HDR from the same evening walk that produced yesterdays pic. This house, exposed on the cliffs above the sea, has a local reputation for being haunted…I suspect it had the rep even before they used exterior shots in notorious movie 15 years ago. In stormy weather, especially in winter, it can look pretty grim. Here clouds were in the process of closing the western horizon, though the sun was still two hands above at 7:30PM in Southern Maine in August, but as I stood framing my shot, the sun broke out momentarily to light the rocks and house with that particular golden glow of evening. It actually happened between raising the iPhone a taking the first shot.
I don’t believe in chance, so I hit the capture button (twice, once for the sky and once for the landscape, since I was planning to use Pro HDR later to combine the images) as fast as I could. I would not want to appear either ungrateful or unappreciative of the Creator’s best efforts. Ever. Camera in hand captures the moment, but I hope one day to be just as sensitive, ready, and aware of what He is doing every second I am awake. Wouldn’t that be something?
Captured, processed, and posted completely on the iPhone 4. Camera app, Pro HDR, PhotoGene. In PhotoGene I straightened the horizon, sharpened the image, and adjusted the color temperature (since Pro HDR tends to make images warmer than life and the light on the rocks was way too intense). Uploaded to my Wide Eyed In Wonder gallery with SmugShot.
From iPhone4 HDR and Pano.
8/7/2010
Across the Harbor Mouth
iPhone HDR. Kennebunkport Harbor where the Kennebunk River reaches the sea, taken from Parson’s Way. The low sun of evening in the summer with the foreground rocks already in shade. This shot breaks the compositional rule of horizon placement (rule of thirds), but I think, with the mass of clouds and flash in the sky, and enough interest in the foreground, it just might work. I could crop it, but however I did it, I would lose. IMHO.
Captured, processed, and posted on the iPhone 4. Pro HDR and PhotoGene used for processing. SmugShot for posting. Auto blend in Pro HDR, with no adjustments. Slight tweaking of levels and sharpening in PhotoGene. Horizon straightened.
From iPhone4 HDR and Pano.
8/6/2010
Mushrooms
I have not been able to identify these mushrooms, found growing along side the Kennebunk Bridle Path in Southern Maine. The mushrooms they most closely resemble are supposed to grow on wood and have little to no stem??? But then I am far from a mushroom expert. I liked the cracked leathery look of the caps and could not resist a ground level shot. They were deep in a clump of tall grass, of course. Here is the shot from above, which has its own charm…especially the shadows of the grass stems across the left cap.
Canon SX20IS. 1) 28mm equivalent and Super-macro. f4 @1/250th @ ISO 125. 2) 450mm equivalent and macro @ f5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Programmed Auto
In Lightroom, some Recovery for highlights. Fill Light and Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Around Home 2010
8/5/2010
Still on Swallows
I was walking out the dyke trail at Scarborough Marsh one Saturday a few weeks ago when I came upon a group of Tree Swallows flocking in and out of a small tree by the bridge. The were swallows so they were never still, but this particular swallow remained in place long enough for me to get a sequence of images at close range. While the image above shows of the species to best effect, I like the one below for personality. He seems to be saying “You got a problem with that!”
Canon SD4000IS behind the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope for the equivalent field of view of a 1) 1800 mm and 2) 3000mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/1000th at ISO 200 and 1/640th at ISO 125. Programmed auto. Effective f5 and f8.
Slight Fill Light and Blackpoint right in Lightroom. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset. Both images had to have Chromatic Aberration and Purple Fringing dealt with, as this is an absolutely worst case situation for both. If there is any of either present in the system it is going to show up in an image like these.
From Digiscoped New DiaScope 65FL
8/4/2010
Swallows Anyone?
I visited Plum Island at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge last Saturday, and though the digiscoping was not great (birds too far away mostly), the Tree Swallow’s were impressive. I am told that the 100,000 or more swallows I saw there were only a tiny fraction of will be on the refuge in a few weeks. I can not imagine. These are fast moving birds. 1/1000 second was not fast enough to freeze all motion.
Canon SD4000IS behind the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for an equivalent field of view of about a 1700 mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Effective f4.5.
Blackpoint considerably right in Lightroom. Auto Color Balance. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
From Digiscoped New Diascope 65FL
And of course, of this I had to have video.
8/3/2010
No Name Creek: iPhone Panorama
This is 12 images from the iPhone camera, representing over 220 degrees of view, taken from the same spot as yesterday’s HDR (you might want to compare). It really needs to be viewed as large as your monitor will allow (click the image and use the size controls at the top of the new window). AutoStitch on the iPhone makes this kind of shot easy. You just take roughly overlapping images and the program does all the aligning, stitching and exposure blending for a very polished result.
Often I use a panorama matrix that is two shots deep…4 across and two down for 8 images, or 5 across and 2 down for 10, but with this sweep I kept it simple. I was not about to attempt 24 overlapping shots. When you do two shots vertically you get an automatic HDR effect, since the upper shot is generally metered off the sky, and the lower off the foreground, and the AutoStitch exposure blending routine does an excellent job of preserving the best of both. With a single layer pano you lose that benefit, and, indeed, this set correctly rendered the sky but left the foreground too dark…even with levels adjustment in PhotoGene, since I was not willing to sacrifice sky detail for the landscape exposure. In Lightroom I would have used the dueling Graduated Filter effects I have outlined in the past, but I was determined to keep all processing on the iPhone for this iPhone shot. Therefore I used Tiffin’s FotoFX app to add a .6 Graduated Neutral Density filter effect to darken the sky. Once saved, I reopened the image in PhotoGene and adjusted curves, exposure, contrast, and saturation for the finished image, which is a pretty good rendering of this huge sweep.
From iPhone 4 HDR and Pano.
8/2/2010
No Name Creek: iPhone HDR
So I admit to still being slightly amazed and muchly delighted that the iPhone can do this! Such a great toy. Of course it is actually rapidly becoming a tool…just another piece of equipment with its set of inherent possibilities that I can bring to bear on photo opportunities. It is still all about the eye. That is not to diminish the simulative effect of a new toy. Having the HDR program and a decent camera on my iPhone certainly stimulates my eye to look for possible HDR-worthy scenes, and leads me to compositions I might not have attempted with my standard gear. This shot, for instance would have required considerable manipulation in post processing to pull off. The iPhone just makes it easy.
Lots to like here (imho), beginning with the range of tones in the foreground water…the way the camera has captured the play of light across the surface and even where it penetrates the water to bring up the creek bottom. That, to my eye, is way cool! Then we roll back over the various textures and green tones of the marsh grass, lead by the curve of the creek, to the horizon and the little bit of beach balanced between the dark mass of houses on the left and the few trees on the right, and then we shoot out over the ocean under a ceiling of clouds that recedes to infinity, with the blue of the sky pinning us to the top of the frame.
Of course, I did not think or see any of this when taking the picture. I did not get much beyond “I like that. Wonder what it would look like as an iPhone HDR?”
Captured and processed on the iPhone 4. Two exposures in ProHDR, one metered and focused on a bright cloud at the top, one metered and focused on the shadow under the bank of the stream in the left foreground. Levels and sharpen in PhotoGene, and the red channel pulled back a bit. Uploaded direct to Wide Eyed In Wonder in SmugShot.
From iPhone 4 HDR and Pano.