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Difficult light - RAW conversion

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Merci bien, Nicolas

never heard about it - do you have any sources for that?

Bonsoir Michael

Sorry to answer late but I just come back from an assignement in Lille (North of France)…

In C1pro menu "menu/show superpose utility" then ion the pop-up, choose and set your superposing image…

You may superpose with a raw, a tif or a jpg. It is superpositon, not real blending, but imo, worth the try…

Superposition.jpg
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
good evening!

now the stitch - with the °pump-up°-methode:


pano_N_C1_c.jpg


sorry for the ©-sign, but the client might want that one... - still it's quite important to show it in a big size...


a similar detail as in post 21, on the left the crop of the cut-away-from start-methode - on the right the pump-up; both are tiffs-HDRs....

oldnew.jpg
 

Greg Rogers

New member
Outstanding. This has persuaded me to giving Photomatix another go ........working from RC'ed tiffs this time.

Regards,
Greg
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Merci bien, Nicolas

j' en connaissait pas.....
but I' ve the LE-version of C1, only. Still waiting, what C1 will have in the 4 version.


Greg:
The RAWs were shot on auto-WB, as one can adjust' em easely in the RC..

And yep: tint is important for getting the correct WB, as the temperature only can't match on its own. I you' ve a bright gray card, you should be fine, without tweaking the tint, again.

But as you realised, for these shots, a whitebal, or somethin else would have been useless, as one of the problem are, that different types of light quality were arround, in terms of contrast AND color temperature/tint. BTW: It's taken out of a small window, at the attic...

Knowing the track to walk, I remade the 2nd, the dusk-pano; still using the pump-up-methode: no bracket shots, just single exposures, so lots of manual tweaks in PS were required: a hell of a work, though. And for Ray the possibilty to see more details.
The hills at the right side are still a bit dull....

zoomify
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Michael,

What is the final destination of these? A large print, or some sort of scrolling vdu image?

Now I've got to look for the detail, like a couple of missing roof tiles, a cat stuck in a tree, or whatever. It is only when you zoom right into the hills, do they look dull, but they look fine in context with the far/middle ground, they adds some scale, distance, back ground, but it does depend on how the image is going to be presented. Amazing improvements, though.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Ray

it just started as a client's wish to have one citypano viewed from his house - with sunlight. Print was then already the destination, as he found a early painting of the town, with about the same view; and wanted a today's version. Btw. they "cheated" in the MA already, without Photoshop ;-)

Beeing aware of the view, I decided to make more than just one, for my portfolio and archive.

Now, he wants to have three of them, one in sunlight, one at dusk - the blue one - plus the golden one..... in big scale as A-3, also.

BTW2: He doesn't wants to allow me, to use the other one's - about 15 were shot - for my own purposes. So there's a interesting question raising:

Clearly, I'm the owner of the copyright, but as it was taken outside of his houses window - he might have a word do say, too. Does anybody has been in a similar situation?

Don't worry, we're not arguing, just trying to find a way....
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Michael,

Thanks for the background info. I have not been in the copyright situation wrt images, but plenty of times with other things. If you are mercenary, and if you think you can make more from the private sales, elsewhere, and he has added the usage restrictions after giving you permission to use his location, then it could depend on who has the best lawyer. But, as it is not like that. I think he may probably only want to prevent his rather special prints being readily duplicated. Why not find out what he is really wanting, and then possibly agree to what he has asked? Wealthy friends are better than wealthy enemies (guess he's wealthy, as he's buying your prints ;-)

Then, go to the distant hills, at dawn, and take another pano, so he can see his building. Sell him that too, and he has no hold over that image, and he has paid you to practice on the ones you have so far.

Best wishes,

Ray
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
Ray, thanks a lot

I had have noticed, when working these files, that sharpening had to be done much more carefully, than usual.

As we all know, sharpening deals with high spatial-frequency components, and low spatial-frequency components.

I talked to the client, he primarly want the stitches for a X-mas card; but big prints later on. That's the reason he doesn't wants someone else to use these panos. I still can use them in lowrez on my site.
 

Jeremy Jachym

pro member
Greetings Michael, the pano is looking sweet!

Just wanted to share my 2 cents worth on this project. A technique I'm fond of using in concert with HDR imaging is to take one of the original exposures and paint some of it back into the HDR image, so that the "photomatix" look is blended with a more traditional film look. That could mean a series of local adjustments or possibly one global adjustment, whatever fits the bill....

True, this becomes a fairly labor intensive project, but it would seem like that's already what it is, so what the hell! You're probably already having a lot of fun learning from this challenge... ,so have some more. Cheers,

Jeremy
 
As we all know, sharpening deals with high spatial-frequency components, and low spatial-frequency components.

Spatial frequencies in the output depend on viewing distance (as demonstrated in Ray's link), and because human vision is more contrast sensitive to certain spatial frequencies, sharpening should be targeted at output dimensions. Output quality (in terms of spatial frequency modulation) is also addressed by Imatest's SQF (subjective quality factor).

One element of the Imatest calculation deals with the Human eye's Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF). There is a maximum contrast sensitivity at approx. 6 - 8 cycles/degree, so that is an important factor to keep in mind when we sharpen for a certain viewing distance.

Another factor to consider, is perceived perspective distortion. When an image is scaled, perspective (subject magnification as function of distance) remains unchanged when the viewing distance scales proportional to the focal length used. IOW, an image shot with a 50mm lens on a 24x36mm sensor array has a given perspective. As long as the viewing distance to focal length ratio is used as output magnification factor (e.g. at a ratio of 10x, 240x360mm at 500mm viewing distance), the perspective is unchanged/undistorted. When the image is viewed from further away, it will look like wide angle distorted, when viewed from closer by, it will look like telephoto compressed. One can also deliberately use that effect to change perception of a scene.

Bart
 

Michael Fontana

pro member
updating the thread:

I redid the pano, by using enfuse to merge the bracket panos.
As the light conditions were difficult, enfusing produced much better, more natural looking results, than any other tool. Untill now, a serie of 4 panos - with different character each - came out of that afternoon:

SturmDaemmerungc.jpg

TagNachtc.jpg



Two of them have been printed in big size, the other two will follow.



But now: how to present it on my site? I should update it ;-)
I've been thinking about zoomifying it, here's a early version, which hasn't the correct dimensions and less good image editiing.

Any better ideas how to best present these pano's?

Colin: the yellow one ended up becoming kinda allegory; keeping it neutral - to balance between sky and town - was a mess. So I decided to make it warm, which fits well to the other, cooler ones.
 
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