California Sunset

[Dave_Anderson]

This shot was blended at the horizon from two exposures using a900 and 16-35Z. ISO 320, f/11, 1/13 & 1/100. Each exposure was optimized for sky or ground in LR then merged using PS layers. Taken from the SF Peninsula ridgeline overlooking Russian Ridge -- Enjoy!



I'm not sure why SmugMug is stripping the geo data from the EXIF... the rest of the EXIF is intact for the 1/13 exposure.

[Dr. Harout]

Superb shot. Superb colors.

[Birma]

Cracking shot - what a lovely sky and colours.

[aster]

Going for two different exposures..and blending is good thinking, Dave.

That's one scene with extra depth and colours that we probably would miss from a single expossure.

Yildiz

[Dusty]

Good shot, Dave. How long did it take you to do the blending?

Dusty

[Dave_Anderson]

Thanks all for the nice comments. Yildiz, I really had no other choice... the light was much too beautiful to let the foreground get blocked up. This was shot as a sequence with HDR intent but I just can't seem to get an HDR result I'm satisfied with on this type of shot. I keep trying though.

Dusty, it took about 15 minutes as I recall. I spent much more time on that getting frustrated with HDR.

[mughdesi]

This is truly an amazing picture. But I don't know much about HDR, can you explain how did you do it?

[Javelin]

if your shots were RAW I wonder if DRO could have done a similar thing for you? You could try it, loading the sky exposure up in IDC and applying DRO at varying degrees to see if it brings out the forground you are loking for ?

All the same this looks great .

[bakubo]

Really nice!

[Dave_Anderson]

This is truly an amazing picture. But I don't know much about HDR, can you explain how did you do it?

This really is not HDR. What I meant by "shot with HDR intent" is that I took a series of photos with the camera in the same position at the same aperture and ISO settings, and varied the shutter speed so that I had a series of exposures ranging from "much too dark" to "much too light". HDR is a way of using special software to merge these exposures, taking the best pixels from each frame.

What I did was selected two out of that series of photos and blended them together, using the sky from one and the land from another.

Here is a shot from a couple of weeks earlier using the same technique that was run through HDR processing software:



This one almost worked, but I'm not quite happy with the way the sun and its rays ended up posterized from the HDR process. Still trying to find my HDR mojo.

[Dave_Anderson]

if your shots were RAW I wonder if DRO could have done a similar thing for you? You could try it, loading the sky exposure up in IDC and applying DRO at varying degrees to see if it brings out the forground you are loking for ?

All the same this looks great .

Thanks for the nice comment. Regarding DRO... Sorry, not a chance! Yes, I always shoot RAW. However, I don't use IDC. As soon as I found out that it writes back to the RAW file I quit using it. The conversion quality wasn't that great IMO anyway, and the options are very limited.

Anyway, even in RAW, the exposure that had the perfect midtones in the ground had most of the sky near the sun completely blown out. The exposure that had the perfect midtones in the sky had no detail in the ground at all. The middle exposure is just a pale shadow of this final image because of the compromises that had to be made to bring up the shadows. The fine tonal gradations in the ground are lost and the sky has much less texture.

[Dave_Anderson]

Really nice!

Thank You!

[Dusty]

Regarding DRO... Sorry, not a chance! Yes, I always shoot RAW. However, I don't use IDC. As soon as I found out that it writes back to the RAW file I quit using it. The conversion quality wasn't that great IMO anyway, and the options are very limited.

IDC doesn't change any of the RAW data, it just appends your settings to the file. Still, I would see how some wouldn't want that, and for those the solution is easy, copy one set of RAWs into an untouched directory, or just leave your archived copies always untouched.

Dusty

[Dave_Anderson]

Dusty, I understand that but I want my RAWs to be truly archival. I work in the data storage industry and am all too aware of the many things that can go wrong. Additionally, sometimes other apps can't read the RAW that has been modified by IDC. I want my backups on my backup drive, I don't want to have to keep multiple copies on my main drive just so I can use different programs to open my RAWs.

It all comes down to personal preference, like anything else in photography.

[Juanito200]

Those are two very nice photos Dave- I like the kind of HDR that approaches or exceeds what the eye can see (while looking natural). The first one is stunning. John