Advice Wanted for High Dynamic Range

If one is to push one single raw files to its limits, general consensus and reviews all indicate that Sensor sensors are doing quite better in this arena. The newer FF Sony sensors in A7rii and A7sii seems to be the best current sensors.

However, if taking a series of bracketed shots for HDR processing, I am not sure the sensor strength is still relevant. Afterall the different areas of an HDR image are taken from different shots. Correct me if I am wrong.

Na, if your bracketing you can pretty much set your own DR by simply increasing the number of shots.

But there are so many conditions that just don't lend themselves to bracketing. Sure you can use fill flash when it is realistic or bracketing when it is possible...but wouldn't it be more liberating using a camera that allows you not to rely on these techniques...but rather spend your efforts composing and looking for dramatic light.

Hogloff wrote in post #18307833
But there are so many conditions that just don't lend themselves to bracketing. Sure you can use fill flash when it is realistic or bracketing when it is possible...but wouldn't it be more liberating using a camera that allows you not to rely on these techniques...but rather spend your efforts composing and looking for dramatic light.

Yup. There are always techniques to workaround cameras shortcomings but they are never optimal. Flash works great if your posing people in the woods, not so great if you see a bear and her cubs out on the trail. HDR works great when things are relatively stationary, not so great when things are moving.

For your use case, get the smallest flash with the right functionality to save on weight and use it for fill. It's a cost effective way to address your problem. Expose for the BG and let the fill flash help with the FG.

Scrumhalf wrote in post #18307875
For your use case, get the smallest flash with the right functionality to save on weight and use it for fill. It's a cost effective way to address your problem. Expose for the BG and let the fill flash help with the FG.

I think this is a good solution ... only not to the OP's problem. He described this very clearly as below.

"My primary struggle is that I am almost always shooting in bright sunlight, often with deep shadows from being on a trail in the woods. So, I am always dealing with highlight clipping on cheeks, foreheads, arms, etc from the glare."

Fill flash is not going to help here. It would just stretch the exposure range even further.

The only solution I can offer is to not shoot the subject in full light but to go seeking shade wherever it can be found ... under foliage at the side of the trail, in the shadow of a rock, anything that is available ... and pose the subject in that. That should deal with the OP's problem that in exposing 'correctly' for the main subject, the background is being under-exposed and is disappearing into dark shadows with detail lost to such an extent that it can't be recovered in post given the limited dynamic range of his 70D.

The OP's idea of moving on up to a camera with a higher dynamic range could also provide a solution. Having more dynamic range would mean that he could recover more detail from shadow areas in post without destroying the image. But any people shots in full sunlight are likely to be unflattering, anyway, with strong facial shadows, panda eyes, etc., which are really tough to process away. Having more dynamic range to work with is going to help and not hinder making good adjustments in post. But getting a more evenly balanced image out of camera by using available shade when taking the shots would still provide a much better starting point and lead to better photographs.

Flash light also has its shortcoming depending on the situattion. For example not always the light (color and tone) of a flash speedlight matched that of the ambient light. One needs to be care not to over-expose using flash. It certainly requires lots of practice and skills. Otyherwise, we end up with pictures where the subject is lit up in a bizzare or unnatrual way. I am sure we have all seen such pictures around.

FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #18306290
This.

Well, I've owned the 5D2, and it is one of the worst cameras of its time, and going forward, for DR. It has strong vertical and horizontal banding, sometimes visible in out-of-camera JPEGs, when more than one aspect of lighting is unfavorable.

The 5D2 is a good camera if you shoot at ISOs 160, 320, 640, etc, without HTP, and with good exposure for the ISO. It is not an exposure-flexible camera by any means.

John Sheehy wrote in post #18308738
Well, I've owned the 5D2, and it is one of the worst cameras of its time, and going forward, for DR. It has strong vertical and horizontal banding, sometimes visible in out-of-camera JPEGs, when more than one aspect of lighting is unfavorable.

The 5D2 is a good camera if you shoot at ISOs 160, 320, 640, etc, without HTP, and with good exposure for the ISO. It is not an exposure-flexible camera by any means.

My exact same feelings on the 5D2. Struggled with it for years in challenging light conditions.

bobbyz wrote in post #18306879
Yes, I shoot mostly strobes outdoors. One can use reflectors. Another option is not to worry too much about bg. To me strobe shot will be much better than any pushed shot. Find a place with some shadows and use it. Start seeing the light.

Next time I hike 90 minutes each way, up-and-down Cadillac Mountain, to enjoy the sunset while on a camping vacation with my family I'll make sure to take some strobes, triggers, reflectors, stands, a light meter and a tripod with me, just in case I want to take a spontaneous photo of my daughter and her boyfriend in the fleeting final moments of a sunset to remember the experience.

As to shadow recovery vs dynamic range, perhaps someone can explain in 500 words or less how these things differ in the real world? Because if I can expose for the highlights and push the shadows to recover detail otherwise not visible on my screen or prints, that would seem to me that there is additional dynamic range to be had; much more so on the 80D than the 70D. Back when I shot film I used the Zone System to under or over-expose scenes and then increased or decreased development times to expand/compress dynamic range. How is it different to use modern sensor capabilities and post-processing tools to achieve the same result?

bumpintheroad wrote in post #18309322
Next time I hike 90 minutes each way, up-and-down Cadillac Mountain, to enjoy the sunset while on a camping vacation with my family I'll make sure to take some strobes, triggers, reflectors, stands, a light meter and a tripod with me, just in case I want to take a spontaneous photo of my daughter and her boyfriend in the fleeting final moments of a sunset to remember the experience.

No where did I say I hike with all that gear. Well what happens if your camera can't AF fast enough for that fleeting moment? What you do then? You don't need strobes, triggers etc. Reflectors can be lot of things, a white throw. All depends on what kind of shots one wants. A dinky little flash would work IMHO if used properly with most cameras.

bobbyz wrote in post #18309713
No where did I say I hike with all that gear. Well what happens if your camera can't AF fast enough for that fleeting moment? What you do then? You don't need strobes, triggers etc. Reflectors can be lot of things, a white throw. All depends on what kind of shots one wants. A dinky little flash would work IMHO if used properly with most cameras.

Flash is fine if you want to illuminate something really close to you...it does squat when the dark shadow area is a hundred feet from you. Going from the 5D2 to the A7R opened up the ability to shoot in challenging lighting and recover the dark shadows to create nice photos. This was always a huge chore with the dynamic range challenged 5D2.

DaviSto wrote in post #18306755
No, I don't think so. What bumpintheroad showed very clearly was that if you start with a badly underexposed shot, the 80D sensor has sufficient dynamic range to allow a serious bump upwards in post without introducing significant noise. It demonstrates the capability of the sensor but it doesn't show the best way to capture the shot. The fact that you can rescue a shot after not getting it right in camera (we all do it ... me, often) doesn't make that the right way to shoot.

Bumpintheroad's settings suggest he had room for at least three stops of higher exposure in the original without risk of loss of sharpness. The shot could have been caught 'properly exposed' in camera. In fact, he could probably have exposed a little to right (i.e. with exposure as high as could be without blowing highlights .. maybe 'overexposing' by 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop). That would have left as much detail as possible available to work with in the shadow areas when the overall exposure balance was adjusted in post. This would have been the best way to go as I understand things for a high contrast (low light) scene like this ... whether you were shooting an A7iiR, an 80D or a D600 (or a 7D, for that matter).

What he did is a little extreme in terms of exposing to the right, but generally that's the way you'd capture a shot if you want to preserve as much DR as possible. If you blow the highlights, they're lost as you don't have as much head-room to recover them in post. He could not have gotten that shot SOOC...not without blowing out the highlights. The extra DR you're able to extract in post is in the shadows, not the highlights, so the 'trick' is to expose for the highlights and recover the shadows in post. This often equates to an EC value of -2 or -3 when shooting outdoors like that, which means you need to push the shadows hard in post to get the foreground/subject detail you need.

mystik610 wrote in post #18311124
What he did is a little extreme in terms of exposing to the right, but generally that's the way you'd capture a shot if you want to preserve as much DR as possible. If you blow the highlights, they're lost as you don't have as much head-room to recover them in post. He could not have gotten that shot SOOC...not without blowing out the highlights. The extra DR you're able to extract in post is in the shadows, not the highlights, so the 'trick' is to expose for the highlights and recover the shadows in post. This often equates to an EC value of -2 or -3 when shooting outdoors like that, which means you need to push the shadows hard in post to get the foreground/subject detail you need.

I thought maybe there was room to expose a bit more to the right. Maybe I was wrong. Anyway, the important point was that the dynamic range of the sensor was sufficient to retain enough detail in the subject to achieve the final image that the photographer wanted.

I think the OP's issue ... how to deal with high contrast scenes shooting in bright daylight along the trail ... is trickier. He could expose for the human subject but that would leave the background in very dark shadow. A sensor with a high dynamic range would allow recovery of more detail from the shadows, for sure, but it wouldn't help with the fact that people shots in strong sunlight tend to be unflattering. My best/only suggestion was that it would be best to look for shade for the main subject which would, incidentally, also reduce the overall contrast and mean the dynamic range of the sensor was less important.

Maybe there are other approaches. Fill flash has been suggested but that only works for the high contrast low light situation (portrait against sunset). Anything else possible for the high contrast bright light situation that doesn't involve hauling extra kit?

mystik610 wrote in post #18311124
What he did is a little extreme in terms of exposing to the right, but generally that's the way you'd capture a shot if you want to preserve as much DR as possible. If you blow the highlights, they're lost as you don't have as much head-room to recover them in post. He could not have gotten that shot SOOC...not without blowing out the highlights. The extra DR you're able to extract in post is in the shadows, not the highlights, so the 'trick' is to expose for the highlights and recover the shadows in post. This often equates to an EC value of -2 or -3 when shooting outdoors like that, which means you need to push the shadows hard in post to get the foreground/subject detail you need.

When shooting to the right you need to use POSITIVE exposure compensation, not negative. This is so that you can push the brightest required highlight to the point where it is just short of clipping, moving all of the image data as far as possible to the righthand end of the histogram. You then bring the data back to the left so that it ends up in the correct relative position on the histogram during the RAW conversion process. This effectively allows you to bring up the brightness of the darker parts of the image, to fit in the available output DR, without having to actually raise the values from those recorded.

It is important to remember that some RAW converters are able to work with highlight details that other converters will always clip. I have always found that DPP3.x was one of the worst for working with highlight detail, on the other hand I find that Adobe's Process Version 2012, introduced with LR4 and then ACR in PSCS6 has been one of the better options for working with highlights. I understand that Phase one's C1 Pro is also very very good at highlights, but is a little too steep for my pockets. Because of this variation in ability to work with highlight detail across different software, the overexposure warnings shown in camera can be pretty worthless.

The issue with both the blinkies, and the histogram shown on the camera LCD is the fact that both are based on the fully processed in camera JPEG image. The in camera processing can make a huge difference, because if for example you chose a very high contrast picture style, that will tend to make highlights clip much sooner than if processed with a low contrast style. If you look at the full range standard picture styles, and other processing variables, it is possible to shift the clipping point of the processed image by up to two full stops. Even the most conservative in camera settings seem to indicate clipping on the LCD while the RAW data when processed in LR or ACR with PV2012 can still be very nearly a full stop from actually clipping.

Generally I keep my in camera settings to produce the lowest contrast image possible, using the Faithful picture style, with the other four parameters at their minimum settings, either -4 or 0. I then know that if I take my exposures so that the wanted highlights have just started to show blinkies my exposure will generally be as far to the right as possible, without clipping the actual RAW data. When using the camera's metering system this usually means running the exposure between +1 and +2 stops. In some situations I might go even higher, if I am dealing with a very large DR, where most of the detail in the images is in the deep shadows. Unfortunately this can mean having to allow some of the highlight detail that you would otherwise want to keep to clip, since there are hard limits to DR that simply cannot be overcome with current technology.

Alan