Passing Storm

[canonloader]

I have not really had the time recently to work on my HDR skills. I'm catching up on my paying work, so I had the time to go out early this morning and grab a bunch of 3 and 6 shot AEB sets of a storm that passed through real early today.

A 6 shot spread of 1 stop each, using the 40D and Tokina 12-24 on a tripod. This is on an island in the Mississippi, looking over towards the Northeast and back into the Wisconsin side of the river. I used Photomatix to import the RAW's. Tone mapped and exported as a TIF, which I opened as a RAW in CS3, made my adjustments then exported as a JPG, opened it again and removed noise and gave it some USM to the Green channel and resized for the forum. Took about 5 minutes. :)

http://www.picturelacrosse.com/hdr/river/storm-clouds-set27-img-sm_5490-042409.jpg

This one is pretty much the same, only looking West across the river into Minnesota...
http://www.picturelacrosse.com/hdr/river/storm-clouds-set20-img-sm_5412-042409.jpg

[td67mustang]

I kinda feel dizzy looking @ #1

[kirkt]

The end is near!!!!

[canonloader]

Thanks TD and Kirk. Yeah, this was a once or twice a year opportunity. For some reason, we do not get a lot of thunder storms here. Further south, they happen almost every day, but we are under the jet stream here and it seems to sweep them out of the way.

#2 has some smudged spots and that seems to be from shooting 3, then moving the pippers over to shoot 3 more in AEB. I guess in the one second it takes to turn the dial, the clouds moved enough that PM couldn't fix it. I really do need to buy a MkII. ;)

[tmcman]

Nice. Especially like no. 2 with that gold band along the horizon.
Why usm in the green channel only as opposed to across the board?

[canonloader]

Thanks TMC. If I give it USM across the board, it can get kind of in your face, too sharp. But if I look at the three channels separately, I can pick the one with the most blur, and just apply USM to that channel and when I go back to the RGB channel to look, it looks much better, sharper, without that sharpened feel to it.

Try it some time, It's almost always the Red channel that needs sharpening. This time it was the Green. Blue almost never needs it. I used 48.0, 0.3, 0.0 for the settings. :)

[tmcman]

Good idea. Thanks.

[sas8888]

beautiful lighting on the trees in both photos. Very nice job

[canonloader]

Thanks Scott. Due to multiple exposures. In most of them, the trees were very dark because the camera was metering off the sky. The shot at the high key end was enough for Photomatix to add some light to the trees. I have graduated filters to use for that, but didn't think to use them for HDR. :)

[Tiger_993]

Nice shots. Love the cloud detail!

[jgrussell]

Those are excellent, Mitch. I'm surprised they came out so crisp with a 6-shot series and moving clouds.

[canonloader]

Thanks Tiger and JG. I think they would have been better if I hadn't taken a second to get the second 3 shots. I think that's why the clouds got smeared. :)

[CameraBuff]

I love the lighting on the trees and those clouds just jump off the sceeen.

[canonloader]

Thanks CameraBuff. I am partial to the treatment that HDR does to clouds myself. When I saw them here at home, I had to run out and get some decent shots of them. I'm glad I did, cause it doesn't happen all that often here. :)

[ArcticShooter]

Great work. I think your HDR skills are good :) Just keep finding the views and Photomatix will do the rest :)

[canonloader]

Hey Helge, glad to see you still here. I've been busy, but finding more time to shoot these days. My problem is, I live in a small town with little to shoot in the way of architecture. I shoot down at the river a lot. :)

[Serrator]

Lovely skies Mitch!

[ArcticShooter]

Yes, still here but not as often. Busy at work and at home so something have to give.

[canonloader]

Thanks Serrator. This was a rare opportunity for here. We do get storms rolling through, but they usually come in about a half hour before dark. :)

[eviltech]

Nice, is it just Photomatix , or did you use photoshop

[canonloader]

Thanks Eviltech. I did quite a bit of work in CS3. I saved the original render from Photomatix as a 16 bit tif, then opened that in CS3 as a RAW, so I could use the sliders on it. I added some Exposure, Fill, Blacks, some color contrast, then exported that as a jpg, reopened that in CS3 and did some noise reduction with an old action I got from FM a couple years ago, then did some USM to the Green color channel, resized for the forums and saved it. Didn't take long. It takes longer to explain it than to do it. :)

[eviltech]

All righty then,you sound like you have alot of strong knowledge. i dont have CS3 I only have PE7, any tips on how i can use that software along with Photomatix.

[canonloader]

PS7 can do everything I do in CS3 to the rendered image that Photomatix spits out. Save the final tonemapped image as a TIFF. Then open that in PS7 and resize for the forum first, since a smaller image takes the processor less time to complete any process. Might as well get that out of the way first.

Essentially, I fine tune the exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, which you can do in Image>Adjustments. When I get it the way I want it, I run any noise removal and then sharpen last before I save it as a jpg.

CS3 just allows me to open a tif as a RAW file and use the available sliders, instead of having to do each process separately.

[Broncobear]

Beautiful mood and clouds Mitch!

[canonloader]

Thanks Frank. It appears we are back to the usual though, which is just flat, dull, gray, cloud cover for as far as you can see and lasting longer than the 8 day forecast. :(

[Broncobear]

Thanks Frank. It appears we are back to the usual though, which is just flat, dull, gray, cloud cover for as far as you can see and lasting longer than the 8 day forecast. :(

We are getting some sun here, and I'm hoping it stays..I'm not a fan of dull and gray :-(

[canonloader]

I don't much care for it either. I live right under the jet stream though and it seems to sweep up or push all of the worst weather right over us. Our weatherman even remarks sometimes about how many days without sunshine we get here, starting a day count when it goes over a couple weeks. Right now, it looks like it's going to rain any minute. :)

[bjordan]

CS3 just allows me to open a tif as a RAW file and use the available sliders, instead of having to do each process separately.

What does it mean to open a TIFF as a RAW file? Does CS3 do something differently if it pretends it's RAW?

[canonloader]

Absolutely. You can open virtually any file format as a RAW now, in CS3 and later. ACR uses sliders to adjust exposure, temperature and so on, much easier than having to open a bunch of individual interfaces to adjust just one thing, like Exposure. In CS3 and later, they are all in one window and you can see the effect in a real time preview window. ;)

[bjordan]

So Adobe alters its UI based on what file type you're working with? That's odd because there is not much difference between RAW and TIFF. Many RAW formats are just extended TIFF files. They should make that consolidated, real-time interface available no matter what format you open.

I'm not surprised though - UI isn't Adobe's biggest strength IMHO.

[canonloader]

You can set your preferences to open different formats as RAW's. Technically, not as RAW, but in the RAW editor. JPG, PNG, BMP, all of them can now be opened in ACR, Adobe Camera RAW.

But, there must be something in the EXIF to denote a file as a camera RAW file, cause if I double clicked on a .tif, which was the RAW format for the old 1D Classic, it would open right in ACR. If I double click a normal tiff file, it opens in CS3.

[bjordan]

You can set your preferences to open different formats as RAW's. Technically, not as RAW, but in the RAW editor. JPG, PNG, BMP, all of them can now be opened in ACR, Adobe Camera RAW.

But, there must be something in the EXIF to denote a file as a camera RAW file, cause if I double clicked on a .tif, which was the RAW format for the old 1D Classic, it would open right in ACR. If I double click a normal tiff file, it opens in CS3.

Oh! That's probably just your file extension associations. I don't know what your OS is, but in XP it's easy to right-click the file icon and choose "Open with." You can pick a program and tell it to always use it for that type of file.

For more control, you can open any folder window (explorer), select "Tools" --> "Folder Options" and edit your extension assignments all you want.

[canonloader]

Yes, I know that. What I was saying is, the old Canon 1D MkI RAW files were something like img1234.tif. Not img1234.cr2 as they are now. There also regular .tif files that are not Camera RAW files. If I double clicked img1234.tif, it would open in ACR. If I click plainoldpicture.tif, it opened in CS3. As far as I know, there is no option to set the file type preferences to open different kinds of files with the same extension name, although there might be.

[bjordan]

I see. The files are opening in CS3, which looks at the header and passes it to the ACR plugin if it came from the camera.

ACR looks like a nice tool. Too bad it's only available when you import. There must be a regular plug-in that gives a similar feature set and can be run at any time.

BTW, those are great pictures - very nice HDR treatment!

[stargazer77517]

I really like #2.

[canonloader]

Thanks Stargazer. We just had another nice event with great clouds, and my new camera just got here on Thursday. But there is always a but. The 1D MkIIn is capable of a 7 shot AEB spread, but you need to set that in Personal functions. And the only way to get to Personal functions is with the Firwire, which I did not get with the camera. I have one in the mail as I type, but didn't think it was worth going out for only three shot spreads. Although, looking back on it, I should have. :)