Some Weeping Cherry 5000-ish x 1050-ish. Was a lot of blooms a few weeks ago
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For some reason seeing that made me want horizontal/vertical, 9-shot panorama.
Nah, but those are cool shots. I see a butterfly!
So, after a pretty disappointing run playing more with HDR, I'm starting to rethink my technique. Part of it was just that it was a mildly breezy day amongst the trees, and Adobe's deghosting solution is terrible as something to actually rely on beyond a last-ditch... it kills IQ, introduces splotchy or grainy artifacts, and probably the worst thing it will do is actually take pieces of your darkest exposure, bring it up, and replace exposures in the middle or even the top with those when they don't line up, so you can see all of the wonderful color noise and loss of detail in the upper-midtones, even if they're still conveying that added DR. It's terrible and ugly... like the picture was taken with a broken camera. I have to find a better software solution. Maybe photomatix. Seems to give you a lot more control over that, not to mention all of the built-in correction algorithms for noise, CA, and other things. If I understand it right, I can even export from LR to that after applying NR to minimize noise being brought up in the merging process that happens in photomatix.
I at least need reliable, controllable deghosting for clouds and water, as Adobe's solution just seems to ruin those with either a total miss or terrible dots and splotches. Hell, I have seen it take a clear blue patch of sky and drip coffee or something on it. I'll never understand how anyone can claim to get consistent results with LR's HDR merge. IME so many little things can throw it so far off as to be completely useless. You'll toss shots that would otherwise be viable due to that one thing. I'm looking at about 20 HDR stacks, with varying conditions, and not one of them emerged without its fugly pawprints on it. Is this why people hate HDR? Shots with nasty blobs, noise, and blown-out colors/highlights? It can't even handle trees shifting in a gentle breeze without turning them into noisy, blurry, artifacte-y shmutz. I mean, we're talking as little as 10-pixel differences across all shots royally screwing up half of the final image! What do you do with that? Never use HDR for anything that moves at all? Just the slightest movement in the frame makes it trip all over itself half of the time. I submit that part of it is me not knowing what I'm doing, but there's gotta be more to it when everything you can possibly do with it isn't enough to get passable results. Too many situations on that day, that I know I will encounter again and again, that I will have no solution for with that software. Just more shots I can never get. To be able to pick which shots those ghosted sections favor and mask off regions with a brush tool is like a dream to me. I need that in my life, so I can stop praying to Gaia for all of its wondrous miracles of physics to be still for lil old me.
Actually being able to tweak the tone-mapping and utilize different methods of combining the images would probably help a lot, too. God, I hate Lightroom's HDR implementation. I know... newbie blaming gear for lack of skill/knowledge. But I still feel like I'm easily hitting the limits of what it can do. It's giving me anxiety when I'm out shooting, knowing it'll be a dice-roll later even doing the best that I can. It's the opposite of what I strive for, which is consistent tools and methodology. Ain't got time for alla dis bupkis with my tools!
But beyond that, I think the biggest problems I'm having start in the camera. I've been too careless with my metering, usually allowing the camera to meter on my focal point and then bracketing from there. My mistake there is letting the camera assume that what I'm focusing on is giving a dead 0 exposure, when really it almost never is. This means that I always either miss or overshoot either the shadows or the highlights. I need to focus more on actually capturing the entire dynamic range of the image without blowing anything out... as in, actually figure out the difference, in stops, between the brightest and darkest points in the scene. That way I know where to start and end, and exactly how many shots I need to capture the full range.
So, what I'm thinking of doing is using the dreaded spot-metering. What I'll do first is pop into Av mode with my desired aperture and ISO set. What I'll then do is flip into live view and very carefully spot meter on or maybe near my brightest point (metering on the sun, for instance, would probably be a bad idea,) note the shutter speed given, and then move to my darkest spot and do the same. Probably need to zoom in to get it right, but it's worth it. This way, I can work out how many stops apart they actually are and find my true middle exposure. From there, I can flip into manual mode and go stop-by-stop through the shutter speeds between those two points and hopefully capture the full range. Or maybe I'll realize that there's not enough range for HDR to make a difference and I'll just take the middle exposure I found for a perfectly-exposed shot. I'll need to look into how many stops of DR my camera actually has to be able to draw that line. That, and lots of practice!
I dunno... I think this will work much better than my more hands-off approach of metering once and bracketing from that random focal point, even if I have to work more on streamlining the process and keep track of a little more in my head. Just one of those things where normal metering isn't always trustworthy. Averaging falls apart when you're dealing in extreme contrast. The histogram misleads. I mean, if you already know you're dealing with a scene the camera can't adequately capture on its own, why trust it to meter it effectively on its own? I don't know why that wasn't common sense to me.
I'm thinking of putting the Magic Lantern firmware on my T3i to help with that, as I believe it offers more advanced bracketing that would make this process quicker. Like, if I wanted to do 9 bracketed shots, I could set the middle exposure and bracket it quickly from there. Big deal when you consider that the T3i will only do 3 auto-bracketed shots. With ML I could set the camera to remote timer and let it pop off many more shots rapidly, with one button press... instead of manually cycling through like I need to now.
I mean, my main concern with using this spot-metering method is time. Right now, I want sunsets and shots around that time, which presents problems with light changing very quickly and moving clouds. So as soon as I find my exposure, I need to get all of the shots quickly, before the sun moves too much - I've already lost enough time there by the time I'm done spot metering. I also can't be manually bracketing more than 5 shots because the clouds move too much by then - and even that is a stretch. With the 2 second timer it's a minimum of 10 seconds (and likely double that) between first and last shots. Sometimes clouds cover a lot of sky in that time, even on placid days. So if I can get the spot-metering done quickly, the ability to rapidly pop off those bracketed shots might just make all of the difference. I'd also appreciate slower shutter speeds than 30 seconds later on, when I plan to tackle low-shutter-speed HDR and star trails.
Gotta say... people talk a lot of smack about HDR... how it's lazy and just so easy. But I'm finding there's so much more to it than I realized. A lot of prep and forethought goes into getting good results. I guess if you don't want to learn and you actually are lazy, you can easily throw together some really awful HDR shots, but such is the nature of powerful techniques. It's not HDR's fault that people abuse it. I see it as a powerful tool and I want to learn to use it well.
I'm learning that it demands that you understand light and post-processing well - you need to *really* know what those sliders are doing to have any hope of getting it right. And unlike editing regular photos, there is little recourse for not capturing the light correctly - IQ goes out the window. It takes time and care, on site and at home. I get that it's not a shortcut to good pictures... but has anybody ever seriously thought it was? There are easier ways to be lazy. For me, it's just a way of getting the right exposure where every camera's capabilities typically fall short. It gives you a *chance* at good pictures in challenging situations, where there would be zero chance, even for a pro. The best-composed, most perfectly-focused shot is still shit if you can't grab all of the light needed. If anything, you have more reason to pick strong compositions and really get everything right because you're committing to all of these extra steps in the process. You do not have time to "feel" it out. You gotta be able to nail the composition... by take 2 or 3 you have missed your shot.
So many of the things I want to capture cannot be captured the usual way without huge compromises to IQ. That's what draws me to it. Being that I'm into landscapes, nature, and funky lighting situations, I think it will be an invaluable tool.
Other than that, I've learned that even with a solid tripod, the remote/2-second timer method is best. Even if the shutter speed prevents shake, the shift from squeezing the button is still too much for stacked exposures. Another one is always manual focus for wide-angle landscapes - zoom in on your focal point via live view and hone-in. On my setup, at least, there is no substitute for doing that. Autofocus lets me down every time. Not precise enough at any sort of real distance. Say I want reasonable sharpness 90ft back, with a sharp foreground fairly close to me. Getting AF to hit at 30ft away is already asking a lot. It'll say it does, but sometimes I struggle to see where it actually landed at all - surely not where I put it, though. May actually be my camera, there. That aside, with my 10-18mm STM lens, diffraction starts becoming an issue up past f/11, especially with skylines. Crop sensor and all, diffraction happens at lower f-stops. f/8 seems like the best compromise. But that means I have to be careful about where I focus and how accurate I am, like working with portraits and telephoto lenses or perhaps super-macro shots. I feel like I should be able to get everything at f/8-f/11, most times. Just a matter of picking where I focus better. At 10mm, it's challenging because stuff within a few feet usually winds up in the frame, meaning you can't focus out to infinity. And again, I can't rely on super-narrow apertures. Focusing precision matters a lot, even at web resolutions. You don't see it as blurry... just 'vaguely-muddy' for lack of a better term. To my eyes, it's subtle, but something that really takes away from the impression left.
I still struggle with the tiny viewfinder and small-ish display. It is a test of patience... probably my least favorite part. It often makes it hard for me to see my compositions for what they are, too. The weighting and positive/negative space is hard to gauge. Looks right on screen - wrong in editing. That shot I thought sucked on screen ends up being the best composition, every time. It gets a little annoying, never knowing if what I'm looking at is correct, or if I'm seeing it right. Discerning DOF is similarly tedious - everything is so much sharper scaled so far down. That's not even touching on how bad the screen is in sunlight... <_< I'm seriously leaning towards that idea of mounting my phone on top and using it as a display when using a tripod.
I realize I'm just repeating myself but it's really starting to bug me. It's nothing but a quality of life issue, I know... in so many other regards, I haven't tapped the limits of the camera, so upgrading is out of the question, but that also means being left wanting for quite a long time... or maybe it's just an unwillingness to get used to it that makes me feel so stuck with it. I'm sure I will get used to it anyway. Whether I adapt, adjust, or replace, I wish to be in a place where these annoyances are not a conscious problem for me.
Are ya'll tired of me rambling about things I don't know shit about as I meander hopelessly through this hobby yet?
