[Wheatfield]

Would HDR work with the slow shutter blurred water?

Take 2 images, one for the sky, one for the foreground and blend them in post.
For example, in the below image, the mushroom was very dark compared to the background so I took an image to correctly expose it and another for the background and combined them in post.
This is what HDR is good for.

[sealight]

From what I've been told, and ND filter doesn't event contrast. It makes the highlights darker, but it also makes the shadows darker.

As of the composite, if you expose right, it's usually not necessary.

I'm with you in terms of "expose right", same reason why I also rarely been using HDR so far the last years...filters are a bit different thing- I personally like using graded NDs, and it would also have helped in this shot...I probably would have used a soft graded nd on the sky...even if this would have affected a bit the top of the trees...I just found I took a second shot from that scenery with slightly different settings (guess I took it mostly to get a faster shutter speed to less blur the water, rather than to expose differently), and there the banding in the sky is mere or less gone...

---------- Post added 08-08-18 at 02:46 PM ----------

I think the problem is that a lot of ultra wide angle lenses on full frame have a tough filter situation. You can use filters, but often they can't be screwed in.

I think the hard thing is often to maintain a long enough exposure while having an overall dark-ish image. If it is dawn or dusk, it isn't too bad, but if you want a 15 second exposure and it is 10 in the morning, it gets a lot harder. But a composite image can certainly be an option if you want to take the time.

The other option, not mentioned yet, is to do a multiple exposure composite in the camera. Taking ten shots at 2 seconds each will still give a really nice smoothing of the water. I have done this several times with good results.

This is 40 images shot at 2 second intervals at 1/60 second shot in composite mode and averaged in camera.

the filter situation is one of the two reasons I didn't go for the 15-30mm lens you're using, Rondec- elsewise I might have bought that same time as my K-1...

[sealight]

thanks everyone for your input!

[dms]

You mention it was raw file. Presumably you processed it 16 bit and adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, because initially I thought the banding could be from pp in 8 bit and sRGB as color space.

[Schraubstock]

To me the answer is simple, you like the colour blue and in PP you overcooked the blue channel.
I see this because the water, apart from looking like fog, in the left foreground is way too blue. The sun is low and just behind the top of the trees on the upper right so this part of the sky is bright and overexposed (blown) with very subtle and smooth gradation from right to left. Now you crank up the blue overall and the part of the sky on the left which does have some blue in it will get stronger or deeper while the the part of the sky which has absolutely no blue in it won't react to your blue attack. If you do that in HDR this will get you very hard edges. If on top of that you work with low colour bit depth then the result is what you have.

Check your bit depth, 8 bit colour is totally unsuitable, 16 bit can gives better results.
(32 if you have bit even better)

The JPG image you posted is very compromised and unsuitable for corrections, still in an attempt to show where you have made a mistake I have just reduced the blue channel and you can already see the difference.

My suggestion is to expose to the bright sky and then lift the shadow in PP. The K-1 is a killer in this department.

Also, if you have the infamous clear filter in front of your lens, which the salesman told you to always use, take it off and chuck it in the bin. They can create all sorts of trouble.

[sealight]

---------- Post added 08-09-18 at 06:10 AM ----------

[/COLOR]

To me the answer is simple, you like the colour blue and in PP you overcooked the blue channel.
I see this because the water, apart from looking like fog, in the left foreground is way too blue. The sun is low and just behind the top of the trees on the upper right so this part of the sky is bright and overexposed (blown) with very subtle and smooth gradation from right to left. Now you crank up the blue overall and the part of the sky on the left which does have some blue in it will get stronger or deeper while the the part of the sky which has absolutely no blue in it won't react to your blue attack. If you do that in HDR this will get you very hard edges. If on top of that you work with low colour bit depth then the result is what you have.

Check your bit depth, 8 bit colour is totally unsuitable, 16 bit can gives better results.
(32 if you have bit even better)

The JPG image you posted is very compromised and unsuitable for corrections, still in an attempt to show where you have made a mistake I have just reduced the blue channel and you can already see the difference.

My suggestion is to expose to the bright sky and then lift the shadow in PP. The K-1 is a killer in this department.

Also, if you have the infamous clear filter in front of your lens, which the salesman told you to always use, take it off and chuck it in the bin. They can create all sorts of trouble.

granted Schraubstock- I love blue, but here the banding appeared already before I started working on colors, it was already very visible after just having applied the automatic corrections in lightroom...most time in PP I usually spend on WB, and I know from working on shots of my K-3 when this kind of banding appears if I crank colors maybe bit too far...in this case (and some other shots I took that night) the banding was just already there right from the start. I know that usually I can recover a lot of shadows- at least it was with my K-3- and my guess is, the K-1 will be even better in that department...right now my guess is - I really simply overexposed the sky too much. I have a second exposure, where I changed some of the settings to get a faster shutter speed which shows far less banding than the first shot... first shot was 13sec, second 4sec...

but- to come back to the blues- as said before, yes, I love them, also on stage one of the colors I use the most (I was working as lightengineer) and in the past a lot of my edits probably suffer from a bit too much of it- which also sometimes confuses me a bit, because I do my edits on an calibrated Eizo-screen, and there my edits show a lot less blues than f.e my second display (which is also calibrated, but being just a standard consumer screen) or other devices displays...prints on the other side turn out to look like on my primary working display...in terms of blue I'm still searching the right formula in edit to get a nice, shining ,strong but naturally looking blue, which I can find up here in the northern skies...my ways of editing constantly change a bit- stepping up to the K-1 basically also affected my way of editing old shots I did with my K-3-,different toning, little more subtle,...

[tuco]

... Or a graduated ND filter like we would have done on film?

On BW film, we'd just over expose and under develop the film to compress the highlights. Film version of the digital one above.

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Last edited by tuco; 08-09-2018 at 11:55 AM.

[UncleVanya]

On BW film, we'd just over expose and under develop the film to compress the highlights. Film version of the digital one above.

Sure within a certain latitude I agree. Film was a lot more forgiving in that would compress the dynamic range.

[tuco]

Sure within a certain latitude I agree. Film was a lot more forgiving in that would compress the dynamic range.

You can do this to various degrees depending on the developer/film. I can over expose by 3 stops and really compress the highlights on modern tabular grain film using a pyro developer. I will capture a lot of DR. The ones shown here are 2 stops over exposed.