F

[Frog]

I'll be back to do this one again when the clouds are more cooperative. Very shortly after this shot one could barely see any of the mountain.

[daq7]

Great composition. The colors are a bit lightly saturated for me, but probably right in general. The haloing around the trees is pretty intense. It will probably be pretty hard to get rid of that.

[Frog]

yeah, gotta work on that.
I paid attention to everything but.
Thanks daq

[Greg McCary]

I think the composition is great. I see the haloing could it be over sharpened?

[daq7]

Actually when I said undersaturated, I really just meant the red in the barn. The landscape stuff seems right, but I personally would pop the red just a little bit for drama.

[Frog]

I think the composition is great. I see the haloing could it be over sharpened?

or because its an hdr

[Greg McCary]

I have never had any luck with HDRs. Do you use grad filters? I find it better to get it right in the field without the guess work for an HDR.

[daq7]

I don't know that there is any reason to ever use a graduated neutral density filter if you shoot raw, since recreating that in PP is child's play. Although certainly it is even easier with the filter if you feel like carrying it around.

[Greg McCary]

I don't know that there is any reason to ever use a graduated neutral density filter if you shoot raw, since recreating that in PP is child's play. Although certainly it is even easier with the filter if you feel like carrying it around.

I agree that with Lightroom you probably can. I have just began playing with grad filters and it is awesome. But until I get better at it I will carry the filter. Never could do it in PS.

[armando_m]

Frog,

I like the composition !

I agree on the comment about the barn color

I do not see a particular reason why you choose to do an HDR with this image, maybe the clouds are to bright and I can't see it due to the HDR treatment.

There is a speck of dust in the clouds

[ksbryan0]

I look forward to seeing your next stab at this; you've got the making of a real nice image here. Is that Mt. Hood? Kinda hard to tell with the foliage in the way.

[n8]

I don't know that there is any reason to ever use a graduated neutral density filter if you shoot raw, since recreating that in PP is child's play. Although certainly it is even easier with the filter if you feel like carrying it around.

but if you loose the highlights due to to slow of shutter speed, how much of that can you truly recover in pp? just got my first nd filter, so I'll have to see.
As far as the image goes Frog, I think it's a bit dark for my taste...maybe lighten the whole thing up? As far as the hdr work, it looks good and safe. There's not a whole lot screaming hdr.

[Frog]

Why do pics look darker when I post them than they do off my hd?

I did not use a nd filter as my intent was to use a cp filter which I discovered that I did not have the right one with me. Because I did not have the nd or cp with me, I hoped the hdr process would work as well.
I do not know why so much hallowing occures in the first. Might have sharpened differently.
The barn is very close to the actual color and I prefer not to change it but understand why it could be desired.
I used a warming filter in pp on first, trying to enhance the hint of sunset colors reflected on clouds but have decided that's more than I want to do to it.
This is actually 5 shots but 3 would have done....just covering my bases.

Ken, it is Mt. Rainier from a service road that is only used by local farms, and joggers and walkers.
Later this week we will be having mixed sun and clouds again so hope to get back soon when I have more time to set up.....It is actually darker than the pic portrays and dark and clouds were coming on fast and I still had a bit of a hike back to the car.. Will allow more time next time.
Thanks all for the comments and hope this one looks a bit better.

[GB1]

Frog - Decent scene, but it does seem a little unusual as is. I can see small halos around the branches of the trees, a strange rim around the roof of the house, etc. Nitpicking a bit, i wish the view of the little house wasn't blocked by that tree.

What does the F stand for?

G

[Greg McCary]

F stands for Frog. LOL I like the last edit much better. It has a more natural late evening feel to it. Nice work.

[daq7]

Wow, excellent work on the halos. The second one is very very nice.

[daq7]

Thecounsel: You have roughly 8 exposures to work with in a raw file. If you expose it properly you can select any of those 8 to do a gradient on in a layer to do exactly what a ND filter does except with a great deal more flexibility.

[daq7]

To elaborate: When you take a raw shot you are taking a shot of more than one exposure. This is why raw is so important. It lets you CHANGE the exposure you got in the field. All the detail is there for each of these exposures as if you had actually taken all 8 of them separately. This is a BIT if an exaggeration, since I think there are SOME issues as they get farther from the central one, but I am not exactly sure what they are. All you do is take the normal exposure and one maybe two stops down for the sky, maybe three, and then layer them and apply a gradient to blend them together. It is slightly more work than an ND filter, but nothing stops you from layering even more exposures for greater control.

HDR itself is like having an ND filter on every pixel. Sort of.

[Greg McCary]

Not to get off of the subject of the critique but this could help Frog. The other things I don't really like about HDRs is that slightest movement, puff of wind or tripod movement, between exposures is going to make the image seem soft, That many exposures eats up HD space and not to mention all of the extra PPing that you have to do and with an ND grad I don't have to use a tripod. I guess I am just lazy but if you figure all of the extra steps of an HDR the ND grad seems a lot simpler choice. I just wish here was a grad system built into the cameras firmware.

[daq7]

For HDR that does not have a lot of dark or long exposures, you can work with one raw file. It does not work as well, but it works unless you have a lot of noise in your camera.

[Greg McCary]

For HDR that does not have a lot of dark or long exposures, you can work with one raw file. It does not work as well, but it works unless you have a lot of noise in your camera.

How does that work? Do you change the exposure for each shot and what versions of PS will do it. I use CS4 and Lightroom 2.7

[daq7]

You need to have a version of PS that supports your raw format. You call up the raw file. You can select the exposure from +4 to -4 from the shot you took. If you save a tif file from this it is more or less as if that is exactly the shot you took from the camera. Just save the original exposure that will give you the foreground. Save maybe the -2 exposure that will give you better sky exposure. Maybe -3. Load them in photoshop and layer them. Then apply a gradient to the sky exposure to expose just the sky on the -3 shot. It achieves exactly what a ND filter does, and you only need one camera shot to do it, and you can choose to do it with any raw that you have.

[Frog]

Sounds like more work than taking multiple shots and using photomatix or even blending them in photoshop.

[Jimmy B]

Frog did you take that shot Sunday evening? We need to get together and shoot some, and I have a Lady friend learning to shoot that would come a long. I was shooting some Sunday and recognize the cloud formation.
Jimmy B

[Greg McCary]

You need to have a version of PS that supports your raw format. You call up the raw file. You can select the exposure from +4 to -4 from the shot you took. If you save a tif file from this it is more or less as if that is exactly the shot you took from the camera. Just save the original exposure that will give you the foreground. Save maybe the -2 exposure that will give you better sky exposure. Maybe -3. Load them in photoshop and layer them. Then apply a gradient to the sky exposure to expose just the sky on the -3 shot. It achieves exactly what a ND filter does, and you only need one camera shot to do it, and you can choose to do it with any raw that you have.

I may play with that technique some but that still seems like a lot of PPing when with just using a filter I am not having to create several exposures. I have CS4 surely that would be good enough for an old E3.