Times Square at Night

[sdommin]

Brrrr. It was unseasonably cold last week when I visited NYC for the night. But that didn't stop me from getting this shot of the bustling city. This is actually 2 images stacked one on top of the other, to get the dynamic range needed for the bright lights vs. the darker background.

G3 - ISO50, manual focus at infinity, "master" exposure 1/3 sec., f5

http://home.att.net/~sdommin/timessquare.jpg

[getg3]

Scott,

It is awesome and great stitching. Thanks for sharing!

[AeroSquid]

wow!

[pradeep1]

Scott, how did you do this picture? I am not that well versed in photo editing software to know what you did. I'd like to know how you blended the pictures to increase dynamic range and also how you did the nifty shadowed frame around your picture.

Thanks,

Pradeep

[KarlJones]

Bravo! Well Done!

[devs]

Great shot mate - I'd also be interested in knowing what you mean by stacking the two images?

Did you set one to overlay or something like that?

Well done,

dEVS! ;)

[sdommin]

pradeep1 wrote:
Scott, how did you do this picture? I am not that well versed in photo editing software to know what you did. I'd like to know how you blended the pictures to increase dynamic range and also how you did the nifty shadowed frame around your picture.
Thanks,
Pradeep

Thanks a lot, everyone! Pradeep, here's how I did it...

First, I knew I would have a problem with the VERY bright lights and the darker surrounding areas (that's the secret - you have to plan ahead!). I put my camera on my mini-pod, and set it on a trashcan (I'm always on the lookout for conveniently placed trashcans!). Then I took 2 exposures, one where the bright lights looked good, and one where the rest of the scene looked good. I was very careful not to move the camera while I changed the shutter speed between shots. Here they are...

http://home.att.net/~sdommin/nyc_test.jpg

Back home, I opened the darker photo in Corel PhotoPaint (I find this procedure MUCH easier in PhotoPaint than it is in PhotoShop). Then I imported the brighter photo and placed it right on top of the darker photo. Now I have a picture with 2 layers - bright on top of dark, though I can't see the dark layer because its hidden below the bright layer. Because the pictures are identical except for exposure, they match perfectly with one another.

Make sense so far?

PhotoPaint has a "brush" where you can "rub" out parts of one layer, revealing what's on the layer below. I think its called an "eraser" in PhotoShop. I can adjust my brush so that it has different opacities, so that I can erase just a little or a lot. On my bright photo, I erased everything on the Samsung sign in the upper left (also the Coke football sign below it). I very lightly erased parts of the Forensic sign and the Cat in the Hat sign below it, too (to darken them up just a bit). There were a few smaller bright signs I touched up as well.

The frame is easy - just increase the paper size to add a white border that looks like a mat. Then "select" the main picture to make it an object. Once something is an object, you can add a shadow to it. Its pretty basic, though it may sound complicated.

http://home.att.net/~sdommin/timessquare.jpg

[sdommin]

devs wrote:
Great shot mate - I'd also be interested in knowing what you mean by stacking the two images?

Did you set one to overlay or something like that?

Well done,

dEVS! ;)


Thanks, Dev. In this case, I didn't need to use overlay, since I only needed small parts of one image.

[paul162brown]

sdommin

Great shot and thanks for sharing the technique used.

For anyone else reading this, you MUST have a look at SDOMMIN's other pictures which you can find within the 3rd page of the galleries section of this site. They are stunning and are of the very best pictures that I have seen taken on a G3. They are very inspirational and show just what can be achieved with this camera.

Top stuff!

Paul

[jarolalo]

Did I miss something? You did not mention the difference in the cars.

Beautiful image. Thanks for sharing.

[sdommin]

paul162brown wrote:
Great shot and thanks for sharing the technique used.

For anyone else reading this, you MUST have a look at SDOMMIN's other pictures which you can find within the 3rd page of the galleries section of this site. They are stunning and are of the very best pictures that I have seen taken on a G3. They are very inspirational and show just what can be achieved with this camera.

Top stuff!

Paul


Thanks, Paul. That's nice of you to say.

[sdommin]

jarolalo wrote:
Did I miss something? You did not mention the difference in the cars.

Beautiful image. Thanks for sharing.

Did you notice that the cars have no wheels?

They're hover-cars, the latest thing in NYC!! What will they think of next?

[svong]

Scott,

This is a very interesting technique. Thanks for sharing.

Sue

[sdommin]

svong wrote:
Scott,

This is a very interesting technique. Thanks for sharing.

Sue

Thanks, Sue. Try it out and let us know how it works for you.

[Cadenza]

Thanks, Scott.

I understand perfectly what you've done. Now, could you have
done this photo with one shot? Say, take a RAW file, duplicate
it, adjust contrast for highlights in one, then adjust contrasts
for the low light areas in the other copy, then apply the same
technique? The advantage is that you wouldn't have to have
hoovering wheels, but would it significantly alter the quality of
the photo? Oh, ok, I'm being lazy. I suppose I can try it myself
sometime and see how it turns out.

Also, is there any reason why you'd prefer to manually change
the shutter speed between shots, instead of using auto bracketing?

[phili1]

Scott super job. When I first saw it my reaction was wow, best shot of those lights I have seen. I saw one other done this way and yours is at the top of the list.

One question how did you post the picture on this site.

[sdommin]

cadenza wrote:
I understand perfectly what you've done. Now, could you have
done this photo with one shot? Say, take a RAW file, duplicate
it, adjust contrast for highlights in one, then adjust contrasts
for the low light areas in the other copy, then apply the same
technique? The advantage is that you wouldn't have to have
hoovering wheels, but would it significantly alter the quality of
the photo? Oh, ok, I'm being lazy. I suppose I can try it myself
sometime and see how it turns out.

It is possible to do that, and sometimes I do use that technique. However, in this shot, it wouldn't have worked. There was SO much difference between the brightest parts and the darkest parts, that I really needed 2 exposures. There just isn't enough dynamic range in our camera (any camera, not just the G3) to cover it all. Once you "blow out" the highlights, even in RAW, there just isn't any information there. Those pixels are "white", according to the camera, and no amount of processing is going to recover them (remember, those signs are BRIGHT!!).

Also, is there any reason why you'd prefer to manually change
the shutter speed between shots, instead of using auto bracketing?

I was using the manual mode, and the auto-bracket function doesn't work in that mode. Since this was a very unusual scene, I wanted full control over all the settings. Also, I knew that I wanted a "regular" exposure and a "darker" exposure. Auto-bracket would have given me a "darker", "regular" , and "brighter" exposure. I knew I didn't need the third exposure, so why even bother?

[sdommin]

phili1 wrote:
Scott super job. When I first saw it my reaction was wow, best shot of those lights I have seen. I saw one other done this way and yours is at the top of the list.

One question how did you post the picture on this site.

Thanks, Phili!

To show a picture on this site, you need to first upload your picture to a host, like PBase or your own ISP. Most providers give their customers a certain amount of space to use for private websites, picture posting, etc. So the key is, the picture you see is not on this site, only a link is.

To post a link, you need to know the address of where you have uploaded your picture. Then you use this "img" tag:

[ img ]my picture is here[ /img ]

Note that I added spaces between the brackets and the word "img", so that this site wouldn't try to show a picture. You should have no spaces between the brackets and the "img".

If you have pictures on PBase, you'll need to add ".jpg" to the URL. Just one of those things, I guess.

[pradeep1]

Thanks Scott for your informative post. Really cool work. A lot of your work has inspired me to make the best use of my G3.

Regards,

Pradeep