[Zafar Iqbal]

I've noticed several photo's with this kind of depth to them. How is it achieved?

[MarkJerling]

I think HDR and playing with the shadows/highlights in Photoshop, or similar.

[rawr]

This is, I believe, a colourised scan of a vintage black and white photo. Looks horrible.

To me, that looks the opposite of 3D. Very flat due to the lack of shadow detail and the poor processing of colours.

[nuvolari]

I've noticed several photo's with this kind of depth to them. How is it achieved?

of depth to them. How is it achie

Hello, you can get it with narrow lens open, and through post processing with HDR or shadow/highlights as Mark said.

[Digitalis]

that looks the opposite of 3D. Very flat due to the lack of shadow detail and the poor processing of colours.

It reminds me of a badly processed shot from the sigma DP Quattro - that sensor is a disaster, I know why - I'm just waiting for the penny to drop for its user base who are wondering why it looks different from the DP2 merril sensors.

[Zafar Iqbal]

Rawr: I chose to show this photo because I felt it illustrated the effect better.

I found it here, where there are plenty of other photos using same effect, to a higher or lesser degree: Too Cool! 54 ?Colorized? Photos From Last Century?The One Of Albert Einstein Will Blow You Away

Mark and nuvolari: Thanks. I think you actually hit the nail with that one. I'm much much closer using HDR than I've been using any other methods. Now I just need to practice with the parameter tweaking

[MarkJerling]

Rawr: I chose to show this photo because I felt it illustrated the effect better.

I found it here, where there are plenty of other photos using same effect, to a higher or lesser degree: Too Cool! 54 ?Colorized? Photos From Last Century?The One Of Albert Einstein Will Blow You Away

Mark and nuvolari: Thanks. I think you actually hit the nail with that one. I'm much much closer using HDR than I've been using any other methods. Now I just need to practice with the parameter tweaking

Yes, I think it gives a bit of a posterised effect. Quite fun really, without trying to be absolutely realistic. I might have a play myself! ;-)

[emalvick]

Thanks for sharing the link. There are some nice photos there (and some not so nice). I can't even imagine the effort it might take to colorize photos to the quality in that link you shared.

I would guess that most of that could be achieved in Photoshop, but I'm pretty sure a lot of time goes into making some of those photos. The original image posted in this thread, probably could be achieved using HDR software, but using a lot of layers, masks, etc. could obtain something similar in Photoshop, too.

[GUB]

Hey thanks for the link--what a great set of images.
I think you are sensing the relative shallow shallow depth of field that results from large format photography.
This is what the people using the brenizer method try to emulate.-- Brenizer Method - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[saper]

I agree: this 3D feeling come from original BW shot made with large format camera.

[Zafar Iqbal]

Thanks for the replies.

I've played with the Brenizer method, creating something like 20mm f0.3 shots (originally shot with 85mm @ f1.4) or whatever they were

It's not the DoF - I noticed the effect the very first time when someone posted some photos of a newly purchased FA 50mm f1.4 - there was a certain and distinct "pop" to the photos that I hadn't noticed before with other lenses. Thinking it was the lens, I went ahead and bought the same lens as well but after many tries, wasn't able to get that "pop" look.

The earlier mentioning about using a HDR tool to achieve this is right on the money, or at least I'm getting results much closer to this look now.