Comments (2)

By dlscape, May 3, 2010 12:25

Some photogs are purists. They stick to the rule of ‘what you shoot is what you should show’. I, on the other hand, am all for post processing.

To me a photo is a way of sharing a moment in time with other people not fortunate enough to see the original. A camera, even a good one like the Nikon D700, is only capable of capturing a small amount of what the eye sees. For example it’s dynamic range is piddly small in comparison to the eyeball, which makes shots into the sun at sunrise rather difficult.

I keep harping on about the wonders of Capture NX 2, and today’s post is no different. Below is a shot taken with one hand, while driving a manual shift 4×4 around a hilly paddock, while keeping an eye out for the resident stag who kept trying to climb through the window and tell me how upset he was. Knowing what the camera’s sensor is capable of and what your post processing software can recover enables you to recognise and capture shots you wouldn’t even have considered when shooting film.

Look what is possible with about 10 minutes of post production…

Why settle for what the inferior camera sensor recorded when you can make a photo look almost like how your eyeball saw it? Above you can see how the scene was captured (top) and how it eventually ended up looking after a bit of work in Capture NX2 (bottom).

• Lens flare removed – check
• Horizon straightened – check
• Saturation improved – check
• Shadows recovered (while not blowing out the highlights) – check
• Restoration of very dark photo back to how it actually looked – check

It’s good to capture the very best photo you can, I’m not saying you should just walk around shooting without some preparation or planning. However, if you want to try getting all the deer to stand still, smile on cue, not gore you and also not blink too much when the 100+ studio flashes you have set up around the paddock to fill in the shadows all fire simultaneously, go for it! I’ll stick to getting the best I can from the safety of the 4×4 and working on it in post processing.

Comments (0)

By dlscape, March 16, 2010 16:32

I’m terrible at getting up to an alarm clock. Even when I know it’s a fantastic sunrise just waiting to be digitally archived.

Well the other day I did it. I managed to drag my bum out of bed and head on down to New Brighton Pier to see what I could find. And I’m soooo glad I did! By 7am it was already about 25°C and the surfers were turning up in droves, all keen to get in a good mornings session before having to head off to work.

Due to me being a little slow reacting to the alarm clock I hadn’t quite made it to New Brighton when the sun broke the horizon. As soon as I saw the first few rays I pulled over, climbed the dunes and grabbed a shot;

Another example of one shot semi-hdr photography using my D700... "Active D-Lighting set to high Captain! Thanks Scotty, now hit it with a dose of D-Lighting and some Levels & Curves in Capture NX2!"

After half falling back down the dunes to my car I headed on down to the pier. Only one other photog had made the effort to get out of bed early so we had the beach and the surfers to ourselves. It turned out to be one of those mornings where pretty well anything I pointed the camera looked great. I like those

Luckily the surfers who turned up were so entranced by the call of the breakers they didn’t notice me following them around (or more likely they just wanted to keep away from the dishevelled looking, coffee craving, odd ball with the camera )

Five minutes drive down the coast from home. Why on earth would you want to live anywhere else? Well barring a tsunami that is. But apart from the threat of a wall of water washing you away, life here is pretty damm good.

For the full set of images click here.