Forgot Password
Pentax Camera Forums Home
 

Reply
Show Printable Version Search this Thread
03-01-2016, 01:31 PM   #1
Veteran Member
FantasticMrFox's Avatar

Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Munich
Posts: 2,339
Dynamic range on mountaineering

Last Sunday some friends of mine and I went out in splendid weather for some mountaineering in Glen Coe. The sky was a deep, cloudless blue, the snow sparkling white. Naturally I took a lot of pictures of my mates climbing around in crampons and with ice axes, but the results were pretty disappointing.

The main crux was balancing exposure. Shooting in the snow tricks the camera's exposure meter to underexpose so one has to overexpose to keep the snow white instead of grey. Unfortunately I was not able to get a decent exposure for the foreground without completely killing the highlights in the sky. I consistently underexposed as much as necessary to keep the sky alright, always checking my histograms, but this resulted in a foreground so dark that pulling up the shadows +100 in LR didn't even do the trick. And obviously, that completely destroys the colours in the foreground.

I know it is possible to get properly exposed subjects against a bright background. This is a great example (and the sun is right there in the frame), here's another one.

But how do they do it? With landscape photographs I would simply bracket and do HDR or manually blend exposures, but that doesn't work with fast moving subjects. The images don't look like a flash was used either. They might have a bit more dynamic range to work with from full frame sensors compared to my APS-C camera, but that surely cannot be the only difference.

I used my K3 with a CPL and naturally shot RAW. For editing I use Lightroom and Affinity Photo (essentially equivalent to Photoshop).

Any suggestions are very welcome!

03-01-2016, 01:43 PM   #2
Veteran Member
bertwert's Avatar

Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Golden, BC
Posts: 15,173
Magic?

I (think) I've gotten some photos with exposures like that but can't remember how and I'm to lazy to find them...
03-01-2016, 01:47 PM   #3
Veteran Member
FantasticMrFox's Avatar

Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Munich
Posts: 2,339
Original Poster
QuoteOriginally posted by bertwert Quote
Magic?

I (think) I've gotten some photos with exposures like that but can't remember how and I'm to lazy to find them...
I am also getting some, like the one below, but this is an example with a low angle and less light in the sky, and I am looking to get this consistently rather than just by chance

03-01-2016, 01:48 PM   #4
Veteran Member
bertwert's Avatar

Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Golden, BC
Posts: 15,173
QuoteOriginally posted by FantasticMrFox Quote
I am also getting some, like the one below, but this is an example with a low angle and less light in the sky, and I am looking to get this consistently rather than just by chance
Same here...

03-01-2016, 01:49 PM   #5
Site Supporter
Site Supporter




Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Blue Hill, Nebraska
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 494
I think part of the success of the linked photos (particularly the first one linked) might be due to the fact that the snow around the subjects was not shadowed, resulting in reflected light brightening up the otherwise shadowed side of the subject enough to pull up shadow and color detail in post. Also, the photo you linked of the person wearing the red coat appears to me to have suffered a little from loss of shadow/color detail...kind of blotchy looking I think. The limited size of the images may be hiding quite a bit of noise as well.
03-01-2016, 01:50 PM   #6
Veteran Member




Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 2,415
QuoteOriginally posted by FantasticMrFox Quote
I took a lot of pictures of my mates

Call me cynical, but my bet would be your examples are semi-staged, with the photographer using a hard grad filter in a Lee holder. (FWIW, you can see similar shots of rock climbers on the Lee website.)

03-01-2016, 02:00 PM   #7
Veteran Member
FantasticMrFox's Avatar

Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Munich
Posts: 2,339
Original Poster
QuoteOriginally posted by darylk Quote
I think part of the success of the linked photos (particularly the first one linked) might be due to the fact that the snow around the subjects was not shadowed, resulting in reflected light brightening up the otherwise shadowed side of the subject enough to pull up shadow and color detail in post.
That's certainly possible - so essentially luck (or the right angle).

Still, when I took an image with the sun right in the frame I had to underexpose so much that the snow in the foreground became very, very dark, despite reflected light.

QuoteOriginally posted by CreationBear Quote
Call me cynical, but my bet would be your examples are semi-staged, with the photographer using a hard grad filter in a Lee holder. (FWIW, you can see similar shots of rock climbers on the Lee website.)
Professional outdoor images are almost always 'staged', as in done in collaboration with the athlete, under direction of the photographer.

I hadn't thought of a grad filter, that's certainly a possibility.

03-01-2016, 02:14 PM   #8
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
JensE's Avatar

Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Leipzig
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 1,942
With this much light (as in 2nd example), using a low ISO setting on a K-5, I am normally able to 'expose to the right' with fast shutter speed, i.e. expose correctly for the effect around the sun and pull a lot detail out of RAW data of what looks almost black in the out-of-camera JPEG. It's some effort in post-processing still. For the first example, my bet would be that this was not shot using a steep grad filter, but that it is a composite of two different exposures. The sky is separated from the action, so you can easily expose once for the action and another time for the sky with sun and blend the two.
03-01-2016, 02:18 PM   #9
Senior Member




Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Suceava, Romania
Photos: Albums
Posts: 139
Obviously it's not about the dynamic range.

Lightroom (says the exif) + gradient filter from LR probably. It's obvious post-processing shenanigans.


Learn these tricks Mr.Fox and out-do your friends! Keep the Pentax flag high, up there!
03-01-2016, 02:19 PM   #10
Veteran Member
johnmflores's Avatar

Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Somerville, NJ
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 5,361
I'd guess that those shots you linked too had some fill flash and Photoshop.
03-01-2016, 02:20 PM   #11
Veteran Member
FantasticMrFox's Avatar

Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Munich
Posts: 2,339
Original Poster
QuoteOriginally posted by JensE Quote
The sky is separated from the action, so you can easily expose once for the action and another time for the sky with sun and blend the two.
I initially assumed the same, but have a look at the snow spray towards the left image border - I cannot fathom how they would have managed to make the transition there.
03-01-2016, 02:30 PM   #12
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
JensE's Avatar

Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Leipzig
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 1,942
QuoteOriginally posted by FantasticMrFox Quote
I initially assumed the same, but have a look at the snow spray towards the left image border - I cannot fathom how they would have managed to make the transition there.
You can selectively darken/adjust just the saturated blue hues in that area to match the sky color of the other shot. Still manageable contrast in that area.

Last edited by JensE; 03-01-2016 at 02:30 PM. Reason: spelling
03-01-2016, 02:31 PM   #13
Pentaxian
Sagitta's Avatar

Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Maine
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 3,081
Since the shots are taken into the sun and the shadowed side of the subject is exposed, I'd bet theres a mirror of sort in play.

Living here in the Frozen Wastes (ie, snow usually on the ground 1/3 of the year), I've wrangled with snow and sun shots myself before - they aren't easy.

My best suggestion would be to 'stage' your first shot - ie, find a subject with the angle you expect the sun to be, shoot it via the LCD with the best exposure for the subject with highlight exposure warning enabled, then save that setting (since the lighting shouldn't change all that much when you actually get out shooting for real, you should be golden from there). Once you get to post, you can then bump shadows and darks up to whatever level works for you. You'll still probably find shadows very dark, however.

Short of getting a camera with a massively wider dynamic range (I'm looking at you, 645Z) youre probably going to be stuck unless you get very lucky in the placement of your subjects and the light.

My personal favorite 'snow' shot I've taken is this one and even then it was a gray day and the post processing was stupidly difficult to pull off (the highlights are still somewhat blown - but then again they weren't the subject). Had I attempted this on a brght sunny day I doubt it would have come close to working.


The best "blue sky and sun" shot I took was probably this one - again, it involved a bit of post to not look awful, and if I remember right it involved a liberal use of sliding the highlight and white sliders leftwards. It was also a stitching of a slew of shots (I was experimenting with the Brenizer method on the tank), and obviously had the saturation cranked. My PC almost died trying to crunch the thing together. If I remember right I also bracketed each individual shot so I could cherrypick which set worked best in post - which basically means I cheated.


If you don't have to worry about your subject moving my best suggestion is to go the HDR route simply because you can then use all those shadows and lights for the final image.
03-01-2016, 02:32 PM   #14
Veteran Member
FantasticMrFox's Avatar

Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Munich
Posts: 2,339
Original Poster
QuoteOriginally posted by Penumbra Quote
Obviously it's not about the dynamic range.

Lightroom (says the exif) + gradient filter from LR probably. It's obvious post-processing shenanigans.

Learn these tricks Mr.Fox and out-do your friends! Keep the Pentax flag high, up there!
I am well aware of all these shenanigans, mate, and use them regularly. Shadows adjustments and graduated filters are not exactly rocket science However, this is all about dynamic range, because that is literally what pulling up shadows in Lightroom works on.

I have one image where pulling the shadows up +100 wasn't enough to adequately brighten the foreground, so I added local adjustments and in the end not only did I have plenty of noise, the colours were also way off.
03-01-2016, 02:32 PM   #15
Senior Member




Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: California
Posts: 141
QuoteOriginally posted by FantasticMrFox Quote
Last Sunday some friends of mine and I went out in splendid weather for some mountaineering in Glen Coe. The sky was a deep, cloudless blue, the snow sparkling white. Naturally I took a lot of pictures of my mates climbing around in crampons and with ice axes, but the results were pretty disappointing.

The main crux was balancing exposure. Shooting in the snow tricks the camera's exposure meter to underexpose so one has to overexpose to keep the snow white instead of grey. Unfortunately I was not able to get a decent exposure for the foreground without completely killing the highlights in the sky. I consistently underexposed as much as necessary to keep the sky alright, always checking my histograms, but this resulted in a foreground so dark that pulling up the shadows +100 in LR didn't even do the trick. And obviously, that completely destroys the colours in the foreground.

I know it is possible to get properly exposed subjects against a bright background. This is a great example (and the sun is right there in the frame), here's another one.

But how do they do it? With landscape photographs I would simply bracket and do HDR or manually blend exposures, but that doesn't work with fast moving subjects. The images don't look like a flash was used either. They might have a bit more dynamic range to work with from full frame sensors compared to my APS-C camera, but that surely cannot be the only difference.

I used my K3 with a CPL and naturally shot RAW. For editing I use Lightroom and Affinity Photo (essentially equivalent to Photoshop).

Any suggestions are very welcome!
The first thing that I would do is not use a polarizing filter. My experience is that they are great for clouds but not for snow, where they just exacerbate the high contrast problem. Also, if the sun is at your back, you really shouldn't need to do more than ETTR as much as possible without clipping the highlights and give a little shadow boost in Lightroom, as in this example:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/108142377@N08/25011566269/in/album-72157662914431864/

If you are shooting into the sun, then you need to make sure that you are at low ISO, so that you can boost the shadows more, as per this example:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/108142377@N08/25352955956/in/album-72157662914431864/

Also, I typically set the exposure to manual, based on not clipping highlights, then I boost in post as necessary.
Reply

Bookmarks
  • Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook
  • Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter
  • Submit Thread to Digg Digg
Tags - Make this thread easier to find by adding keywords to it!
camera, cpl, definition, exposure, foreground, frame, issue, photography, polarizer, post, range, shot, sky, snow, subjects
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Even more dynamic range is on the way... Clavius Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands 11 02-02-2015 11:39 AM
The Effect of Lens Flare/Glare on Dynamic Range dosdan Photographic Technique 5 10-15-2011 10:25 AM
Anyone using the Expanded Dynamic Range feature on your K5? mccamp82 Pentax K-5 & K-5 II 16 02-17-2011 03:31 PM
Dynamic Range on the K-x Shahmatt Pentax DSLR Discussion 33 04-22-2010 03:51 PM
effects of changing ISO on dynamic range? Gooshin Photographic Technique 8 02-08-2008 07:29 PM



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 05:13 AM. | See also: NikonForums.com, CanonForums.com part of our network of photo forums!
  • Red (Default)
  • Green
  • Gray
  • Dark
  • Dark Yellow
  • Dark Blue
  • Old Red
  • Old Green
  • Old Gray
  • Dial-Up Style
Hello! It's great to see you back on the forum! Have you considered joining the community?
register
Creating a FREE ACCOUNT takes under a minute, removes ads, and lets you post! [Dismiss]
Top