5D3 + 35mm + Lightroom - before and after

Would like some feedback, whatever comes to mind, about the before and after.
Just decided to do some ETTR (the indoors lights and a few things outside were blinking) and then see what I could create. I have begun to play with split toning and after I moved a bunch of dials to bring up the exposure in the underexposed areas, I then played with an idea of I wanted it to look colder outside (it was incredibly cold) and slightly warmer inside - so I slightly tinted the highlights in blue and the shadows in yellow.

ISO 1600, F11, 35mm, 1/60 handheld with the 35L on a 5D3

Before and after picture included.

I did not go into photoshop to remove things that I would do - and I recognize the picture looks processed but it is one exposure and not a combo HDR picture.

Any feedback?

thanks

Paul

SOOC

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qGcU​RJ

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qJuB​Wz

I'm just viewing this on my phone now, but the transformation looks amazing. Pls explain how you could bring up the interior brightness without blowing out the outside parts.

The interior looks fantastic! I don't mean to nitpick but the only thing that kind of bugs me is the blue sky thru the rolled up shades. I think they would have looked better if they were darker - like the deep blue in the original.

The adjusted one very nice though possibly a touch to bright, but certainly makes the location look much more inviting than the original.

I think you did a nice job. Not overdone and tasteful. BTW I also find people who post 'before' pictures quite courageous!

thanks for the comments

for those that are interested, this is what I did in Lightroom

after I did the adjustments below, I did the following two filters and 3 adjustment brushes

Filters
1) to lighten the ceiling, I used a graduated filter pulled down from the roof and acting only on the top 1/5th of the photo using Exposure +1.35
2) a used a radial filter to highlight the tree in the back right corner - exposure +1.25, Saturation +83, Clarity +46

Brushes
1) On the brick wall + 0.78 exposure and +89 Clarity
2) On the black table nearest the camera I applied +57 Clarity
3) On the small side wall between the two sets of windows I lightened the wall with +0.47 exposure

I also did the split toning which is kind of hard to describe but the colours I used were blueish for highlights and yellowish for shadows and these are only small effects


On the entire photo, dials adjusted:

Exposure +1.70
Whites - 88
Highlights -78
Shadows +9
Blacks +69

Clarity +69
Vibrance +37

Red Saturation +33
Red Luminance -28

Sharpening +26
Radius 1.0
Detail 25
Masking 18

Noise Reduction 32
Detail 68
Constrast 0
Color 16
Detail 50

Grain 36

Thanks!

I will say that I think you could have gone another half stop or so on the exposure without actually blowing any of the highlights. Thats where having true RAW histograms available on the camera would really benefit those that shoot ETTR. Even though it is totally unused in LR, apart from the very first initial preview, the in camera JPEG settings and picture style have a large effect on the histogram and highlight blinkies on the camera LCD.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #17373255
I will say that I think you could have gone another half stop or so on the exposure without actually blowing any of the highlights. Thats where having true RAW histograms available on the camera would really benefit those that shoot ETTR. Even though it is totally unused in LR, apart from the very first initial preview, the in camera JPEG settings and picture style have a large effect on the histogram and highlight blinkies on the camera LCD.

Alan

Alan,

Thanks for the comments. I decided to do a little experiment to see how many stops into the blinking highlights I could recover the data from in Lightroom (I shoot Raw+Raw but the picture mode is set to A for the Jpeg representation in camera). My initial experiment was a bit of a failure as I used the same cafe setup to get blinking highlights from the hanging ceiling light and the white windows across the street (not exactly a wedding dress which I will go back and use) but I was sort of shocked (I know I'm wrong here) but I was able to go WAY above 2/3rds of stop into the Blinking Highlights and still recover (apparently) the details in Lightroom (massive reduction of Highlights & a Whites) and then still boost the Exposure by 2 full Stop (+ graduated filters and adjustment brushes to increase exposure on darker areas).

I will definitely be redoing this on a hanging wedding dress in a window to check exactly what is possible - my guess is it is probably 1 full stop but I will report back.

The picture below was +3 2/3rds of a stop into the Blinking Hightlights - and the hanging Ceiling light and White windows across the street are no longer blown according to Lightroom.

Please don't judge the quality of the edit - the experiment was only to check to see if how much to ETTR is possible once Blinking highlights have started


Paul

SOOC

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qJWN​SR

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/pMWM​z9

It does depend on how much detail and 'true color' you need in the highlights. In the above case you can get away with the outside looking a bit messed up in the highlights.

That's what bracketing is for though (not just HDR). Ahhh, I remember when we used to bracket for exposure. But even with the LCD and histogram and all the tools we have, getting it spot-on is not always easy and sometimes worth a +/- 1/3 stop.