Please help - really bad forest photos

[shniks]

Hi everyone. I am looking advice. I went to a really nice forest last weekend, but I found it really hard to get a good photo of the trees. I cant seem to get the exposure right - in fact I cant seem to get anything right with this situation.
Look at how bad these photos came out - they do no justice to the beauty of the scene before me at the time (note: no post processing on photos)

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=3664049&outx=400&oq=0&original=1&noresize=1&no stamp=1

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=3664048&outx=400&oq=0&original=1&noresize=1&no stamp=1

As you can see it hard to expose for both the foreground and background. I know I can fix some of this in photoshop, with layers and masking etc etc. But as you can see these photos are so bad no amount of photoshopping (is this a real word???) will improve them.

I want to be able to take a decent photo straight from the camera. What did I do wrong? I used F4.5, maybe this is the first thing I did wrong? I know F8 will produce greater DOF, but its the best point to set the zoom lens of the G5.
I really hate the flare the sun produces between the leaves too. Maybe a different time of day? Am I asking the impossible?

[Scottes]

Most of the glare issues can be helped by using a polarizer. It will also bring out some of the colors better.

"Photoshopping" should be a word. I use it and "photoshopped" quite often, and have heard many, many others use it. Go fo it. By next year it'll be in Oxford's.

But in the long run if you have a scene with 7 stops between brightest and darkest, well, you ain't gonna take the picture correctly. A better bet is to shoot in raw and develop twice - once for highlights and once for shadows. Explained here (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/blended_exposures.shtml) on luminous-landscape.com.

But this isn't always perfect - though it helps a hell of a lot. You have to make sure that you don't blow the highlights while still retaining enough shadows without noise. And since the darkest fifth of the sensor captures only 128 levels of light you might not get the gradients desired in the shadows, compared to 4096 levels in the brightest fifth. (For a 10D anyway.) So you might want to through up a tripod, set bracketing at +/- 1.5 stops and take 3 images, then merge them in Photoshop. It's not as clean as the blended exposure method but you'll have more range in each stop.

[scottbergerphoto]

Scottes,
Nice explanation and thanks for the link!
Regards,
Scott

[G3]

A neutral density filter may help in this situation, too.

[PacAce]

What I would recommend is to use an external flash to get some fill-in light into the shades. You won't be able to be get all the shades but at least can light up hte ones close to you.

[Scottes]

Looking at these pictures again, I don't think there's any way this shot would come out "right." In the brighter picture the shadow side of the tree leaning on the path is still black. Yet the sky is blown out even in the darker picture. But then I noticed the shadows - it's not the sky that's blown out, that's the sun. Shooting into the sun like that is just about always going to cause problems - glare, flares, and spots of dust/dirt/grease on the lens get magnified tremendously. A polarizer isn't going to help since the angle to the sun is too tight. The range in this picture is just too large because the sun's in it. (Is that spot of red in the center actually there or is is flare?)

For this picture I shift the time of day by about 5 or 6 hours to get the sun out of the picture. Or better yet go on a bright but overcast day.

The trail looks pretty cool - it would be ominous with a little fog.

[PacAce]

Looking at these pictures again, I don't think there's any way this shot would come out "right."

Scottes, you just said the magic words. I just love a challenge. And looking at the photos, I think I can make it "right" using PS CS. Wait 'til I get home tonight! :D

[Scottes]

Looking at these pictures again, I don't think there's any way this shot would come out "right."

Scottes, you just said the magic words. I just love a challenge. And looking at the photos, I think I can make it "right" using PS CS. Wait 'til I get home tonight! :D

Notice in the quote, where I said "right" - those little squiggly things mean that I'm using MY definition of the word "right", so automatically that means you lose the challenge before you even try. :twisted:

Just kidding. :wink:

Yes, you can do a lot in PS CS. Hell, put a duck in the picture so we feel at home. But there are things that are blown out and blown under (I just made that up to mean "darks that are rendered as black"). You will never *restore* data near the sun - it's completely blown out, and there is no data. But you could add detail and make it look right. And the dark of the leaning tree looks completely blown under. Even if you restored that section from the RAW file you'll have problems, like noise, or lack of detail (OK, you just can photoshop both).


As I said in a recent post where I inserted an extra deer into one of Ian's photos - "Don't ever believe digital, and rarely believe me." With Photoshop you could do anything to that picture.

[PacAce]

You're right, Scottes, about the blown areas. Nothing much that can be done there.

I supposed if I had to take the shot and really thought about it, I would have taken two pictures, one exposed for the highlights and the other exposed for the shadows and then blended the two together.

As you pointed out, using the blending technique using the same picture to get the "right" picture would be very difficult because of the blown highlights.

Gosh, darn. And I was really looking forware to the challenge, too. :(

:D

[Scottes]

Gosh, darn. And I was really looking forware to the challenge, too. :(

You want a challenge?

Take either photo, and change it so it's raining.

[Scottes]

I supposed if I had to take the shot and really thought about it, I would have taken two pictures, one exposed for the highlights and the other exposed for the shadows and then blended the two together.

Be careful how you do this.

As mentioned, the darkest 5th of the sensor has only 128 levels, while the brightest has 4096. You'd have to bracket +/- 1.5 stops - that is, a 3-stop range - to get a decent amount of levels in the shadows. So now you get 2048 levels in the shadows in one picture (blowing out the highlights) and 4096 levels in the highlights in the other picture (blowing under the shadows).

I'd set up on a tripod of course, use Auto-Bracket so that you don't have to touch the camera between shots, and use a remote release, too. You don't want the camera to move AT ALL.

Throw out the middle picture, develop the high and low pictures to 16-bit TIFF and merge. Watch your color settings, saturation, tint, etc - they should match perfectly. Tweak exposure on each as you see fit.

The easy way - though not necessarily the best way - to merge is to lay the pictures in two layers and make sure they're lined up. Drop Opacity on the top layer so you can see through it to the bottom layer, and check all four corners. With a good tripod this should take seconds. Otherwise you might have to freehand rotate a bit or something.

Then go to the top layer, use Select... Color Range to grab darks or brights depending on which one you layered on top, then Delete. Feather, play with opacity if necessary, History Brush if necessary, and Flatten.

[Laziferous]

As was said, I recommend reshooting early in the morning after sunrise, or late in the evening, before sunset. You can take a picture of almost anything during these times and have it look great. The light is much softer, and naturally saturates the colors of a scene. There's nothing like soft, warm light. It'll make you look like you know what you're doing... trust me on that :wink:

Look at the lighting in Martin Paul's gallery. I think you'll notice the lighting more than anything else in his photos. Just brilliant.
http://www.photographyten.com/Portfolio/Portfolio_Home/category_choose.html

[Conk]

What I would recommend is to use an external flash to get some fill-in light into the shades. You won't be able to be get all the shades but at least can light up hte ones close to you.

This was my first thought right away. I posted an example where I had used a fill flash in direct sunlight. Also a hight f-stop and a polorizing filter. Otherwise I would have either had an underexposed forground or an extremely blown out background.
This may not be a great photo by any means but I thought it was a perfect example of shooting with frontal lighting, which is by the way, the most difficult to photograph.
http://www.pbase.com/image/17659229.jpg

[shniks]

Thanks for the input everyone. You know, I had a polarising filter in my bag, but didn't use it, silly old me! I have never tried using the ND filter in a scene like this, so I must try that as well.
It looks like I was trying take a photo of an impossible situation - a big lesson learned here - don't take a photo with the sun in it! This I knew, but it was less obvious to me at the time, because of the trees. I really have to start thinking about lighting, and go back at better times of the day, as mentioned.
Oh and thanks for the photoshop tips too, I knew about the technique of merging two layers, but have never tried it with raw files.

You all are so knowledgeable, I really appreciate your sharing! :wink: