Which to print and where - second attempt...

[stavroshamster]

i used CaptureOne to tweak, i havent touched white balance which might explain for the overly blue - if i had the RAW i could do more

I've PM'd you.

[Bobster]

[kalniel]

Thanks Bobster,

So, on my screen your tweaked image looks overly blue. Is this just because of my screen calibration?

I guess the best thing to do would be to print it off on my printer at home and see what it looks like...

Looks blue to me too, and lots of noise introduced. As bob says, he only tweaked it to get an idea of things - the colour balance etc needs sorting, and going from the original would help prevent introduction of noise.

If you didn't mind your image getting around a bit, I would suggest starting a dedicated 'tweak my image' thread where you provide a link to a hi-res image (even better, raw, if you could upload it somewhere) and ask people to have a go at tweaking it saying what they did and providing you with any full size images that you preferred. Could be quite educational to all of us! (Or you could try the retouching forums of dpreview etc.)

[stavroshamster]

Thanks Bobster. Is that second one done with the raw I sent you? I looks noisy still...??

[stavroshamster]

Looks blue to me too, and lots of noise introduced. As bob says, he only tweaked it to get an idea of things - the colour balance etc needs sorting, and going from the original would help prevent introduction of noise.

If you didn't mind your image getting around a bit, I would suggest starting a dedicated 'tweak my image' thread where you provide a link to a hi-res image (even better, raw, if you could upload it somewhere) and ask people to have a go at tweaking it saying what they did and providing you with any full size images that you preferred. Could be quite educational to all of us! (Or you could try the retouching forums of dpreview etc.)

Not a bad idea, I will set one up shortly...

[Bobster]

Thanks Bobster. Is that second one done with the raw I sent you? I looks noisy still...??

2nd is with the RAW, noisy yes - its been pulled and pushed and will produce noise - most wont be noticeable when printed

shooting a landscape in AV wouldn't be my first thought TBH..

[stavroshamster]

shooting a landscape in AV wouldn't be my first thought TBH..

What's wrong with using AV? Tips are welcome....

[Bobster]

What's wrong with using AV? Tips are welcome....

its helpful for some people (a lot of sport shooters use it)

but if you look at how poorly that image was exposed, can you not see that the meter in the camera was confused?

[stavroshamster]

its helpful for some people (a lot of sport shooters use it)

but if you look at how poorly that image was exposed, can you not see that the meter in the camera was confused?

Okay, so looking at my unedited raw file I can see that the dynamic range of the photo is very narrow - is that what you mean when you say poorly exposed?

If it is, then how has using Av mode resulted in that exposure? Is it to do with the metering mode which the 300d uses in Av mode (evaluative metering). Would it have come out better using manual mode which uses centreweighted average metering?

Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

To be honest, I use Av mode for most of my shots as its easy to use (I don't have to worry too much about the exposure being waaaaay off) but gives me control over the DOF. Maybe I should start using manual mode instead?

[Bobster]

the dynamic range is to do with Sensor, its a 12bit crop sensor, for something like these landscapes you really should have bracketed shots (Brammers is more the landscape tog than me so could give you some pointers in that)

metering modes is up to the individual user, not the mode used..

yes, take control of your camera, turn to M and rip the dial off

[stavroshamster]

the dynamic range is to do with Sensor, its a 12bit crop sensor, for something like these landscapes you really should have bracketed shots (Brammers is more the landscape tog than me so could give you some pointers in that)

metering modes is up to the individual user, not the mode used..

yes, take control of your camera, turn to M and rip the dial off

I think one of the limitations of the 300d is that it always uses evaluative metering in P, Tv, and Av modes unless you use AE lock in which case it switches to spot metering. Likewise, M always uses centreweighted average unless AE lock is pressed which again switches it to spot metering.

But are you saying that the metering mode will have little effect on the dynamic range which is captured anyway? If so, I still don't understand why using Av mode over anything else would confuse the meter in the camera into giving a 'poor exposure'?????????

When you say I should be bracketing my shots do you mean so that I can pick out the one which has the best exposure later, or so that I can merge all the shots together in Photomatix? If it's the latter, I couldn't have done it for that shot anyway as it was taken 'on the move' without my tripod.

I will try and use M from now on, going to shoot some rallycross this weekend, then doing some Macro photography next weekend for a wildlife thing in London - so should get a chance to hone my skills

[kalniel]

I personally think Bob has a bit of a thing about full manual mode

For us mere mortals Av mode is usually the right choice as long as you actually take note of the shutter speed the camera is giving you. If it is within range then it's fine. Overall exposure depends on your camera's competence, sure, but it doesn't take long to learn the little idiosyncrasies and then its easier using exposure compensation (that's what it's there for).

Dynamic range is fixed by the sensor for a given amplification (ISO). Aperture setting or Av mode does not affect this. Nor does the fact a sensor has 12 bits or 14 bits granularity.

To get the most dynamic range (useful for landscapes) you need to chose the best ISO (for Canons this is usually ISO 100. For Nikon and modern Olympus this is 200.) Then you need to expose your scene so that neither highlights or shadows are clipped. RAW gives you a little additional headroom in this area. Sometimes reducing the contrast (if your camera boosts it) will also help (compresses dynamic range). But it will make the scene seem duller - you will then pick the areas to expand in post process, and here is where having a high bits sensor helps, as the inbetween gradients are described in more detail and can be expanded more easily before banding occurs.

Alternatively, you can bracket shots, where instead of trying to cram the information into one dynamic range, you effectively concentrate on lows, mids and highs and capture a large portion of the sensors worth of dynamic range in each shot. Then you can combine them for the final image. This might not give you anything extra, but it gives you the most flexibility with regard to manipulating the data so that the details aren't lost.

[stavroshamster]

For us mere mortals Av mode is usually the right choice as long as you actually take note of the shutter speed the camera is giving you. If it is within range then it's fine. Overall exposure depends on your camera's competence, sure, but it doesn't take long to learn the little idiosyncrasies and then its easier using exposure compensation (that's what it's there for).

Dynamic range is fixed by the sensor for a given amplification (ISO). Aperture setting or Av mode does not affect this. Nor does the fact a sensor has 12 bits or 14 bits granularity.

To get the most dynamic range (useful for landscapes) you need to chose the best ISO (for Canons this is usually ISO 100. For Nikon and modern Olympus this is 200.) Then you need to expose your scene so that neither highlights or shadows are clipped. RAW gives you a little additional headroom in this area. Sometimes reducing the contrast (if your camera boosts it) will also help (compresses dynamic range). But it will make the scene seem duller - you will then pick the areas to expand in post process, and here is where having a high bits sensor helps, as the inbetween gradients are described in more detail and can be expanded more easily before banding occurs.

Hmm, in that case I can't understand why Bobster says the meter in the camera was confused and it's a poor exposure? It was shot at ISO 100, so dynamic range should be as high as it can be. Its not overexposed the highlights or the underexposed the shadows. But most of the tonal range is very compressed. Could it just be that because it was so hazy there wasn't much contrast in the original shot and so the camera didn't capture it? Or am I doing something wrong?

[kalniel]

Hmm, in that case I can't understand why Bobster says the meter in the camera was confused and it's a poor exposure? It was shot at ISO 100, so dynamic range should be as high as it can be. Its not overexposed the highlights or the underexposed the shadows. But most of the tonal range is very compressed. Could it just be that because it was so hazy there wasn't much contrast in the original shot and so the camera didn't capture it? Or am I doing something wrong?

I'm not sure - he'll surely explain

Personally, I can't see anything you've done wrong (though I don't have the exif data). Haze does cause the range to be compressed, which is why you fix it by stretching it out again in PP - this can introduce banding if taken too far, but it's not a shooting technique issue. Going into fine technical details you get more scope to stretch out later if you slightly overexpose the shot (without clipping), but this is something Canon's usually tend towards anyway and it's not anything you do 'wrong'.

Evaluative is the right mode for this kind of shot too IMHO.

Brammers is the top landscape guy around here though - if he has some advice that applies to this kind of equipment/situation I'm sure he'll be able to help, but to be honest I think it's as good as some of his shots before processing (he really excels in PP IMHO).

[brammers]

f9, 1/500s @ 50mm & ISO 100 - the exposure seems perfectly sensible. 0 EV comp - fair enough. It does look a little underexposed from the versions I've been looking at, but I'm downloading the RAW now and I'll comment then.

As to the taking - what Bobster might be making reference to is the way that a meter tends to 'jump around'. Looking at that scene for example, I can see the meter giving very different readings depending on whether you aimed the camera very slightly up or very slightly down, the sky and especially the white snow being much brighter than the land. I'd have exposed that so the snow was just clipping and dragged it back in PP, but that's just my style. The camera is subject to this jumping exposure meter in everything apart from M mode, so while A and S (or Tv on Canons) give good control, they're still subject to the meter - and therefore easily confused by the bright snow and sky.

Personally, I've started using M mode for pretty much anything tripod based, as I don't want the meter jumping around. A combination of +/- EV comp, AEL and A mode can also keep the exposure where you want it, but I guess M is more intuitive. A and S modes certainly have their place though.

You're shooting RAW, which is great, so the only things that effect the image captured are shutter speed, aperture and ISO (which make up your exposure) - as well as flash if you use it. Anything else, like white balance, contrast, sharpness, 'creative styles'... anything like that can be changed from the RAW and you needn't worry about it before you get to the computer. Search back through my old posts for a thread where I talk about using 'uniWB' which makes all my pictures appear green and utterly devoid of contrast; just how the sensor sees them.

Bracketing - can be good. Seeing as you can't increase the dynamic range of your sensor (other than by choosing the sweet spot) and you can't do anything about the dynamic range of your scene (other than with filters), having a few different versions can be good. For hand held bracketing, simply brace and shoot it at max FPS (5 on the a900 is great ) - even if the shots can't be lined up automatically, you can clone from one image to the other afterwards.

Haze - CPL filters can help. They don't do much shooting into the sun, and the effect isn't to everyone's taste, but I still wouldn't leave home without one.

Long post... I'll knock about with it in PP and get back to you Thanks for the compliments, even though a lot of my stuff is film, where the PP is kinda done for me