Originally posted by Lake The park bench photo is wonderful. Could you explain how you chose the photo settings and blend them?
There wasn't anything very complicated about it, it's probably closer to Spray'n'pray and force of habit than anything deliberate. The shot wasn't pre-planned; I ran to the area from elsewhere in the park and was in the usual mindset mix of euphoria, adrenaline, and panic - so I don't think I was exactly experiencing clarity in the moment.
I just set up on the tripod in Aperture priority, selected f16 as it's a good balance, I was in a hurry, and didn't want to risk any depth of field issues or spending time focus stacking. Diffraction isn't a big deal at f16, and this lens only hits its stride beyond f11 anyway. I then just cycled through different shutter speeds by lowering the Exposure bias. If I knew how to use the Exposure Bracketing mode I would! I'm pretty sure it has one somewhere . . . .
I then selected two photos out of the bracket of five and made adjustments in Capture One. I chose the one with the highest exposure ( but a blown-out mid-sky ) and darker one with a bit of detail around the sun. I then overlaid them in Affinity Photo as TIFFs and manually painted the sky through as desired using a masked layer. Really only the sliver of sky at the horizon was used from the darker photo. Then into Capture One again with the merged TIFF to correct the keystoning and a few more tweaks, and then to Lightroom for some spot removal and final adjustments if needed.
I'm still getting used to the system. I've found that the highlight alarm on it is very touchy and possibly a bit too dramatic - but I'll take dramatic over casual. When the highlights are nearing whiteout, they gain a weird purple cast when you try to pull them back. On the other hand, the photo review on the digital back is alway
much brighter than what I see on the computer screen later when I've uploaded the files, so I tend to underexpose everything through lack of experience - an even brighter photo would have been welcome in this situation. I need to learn to trust the histogram a bit more!
Here is a snip from Capture One showing the two files after adjusting but before blending. I have also included a shot from that "bracket" that was in-between the two and has not had any adjustments ( SOOC ).
Hope that explains it? I wasn't sure how indepth to go! If you want some further details or I've missed the question completely, please let me know