An hour in Cumbria

Stayed overnight with lovely people after an evening lecturing at Penryth CC. After a leasurely lunch at the Punchbowl at Askham (a favourite of ours for many years), we managed to spend a little under an hour at Rydal before we had to set off home. In spite of very low light and (of course) no tripod, I managed to capture some of the reflections in the calm water of the lake.

First taste of Cornwall

My first visit to Cornwall – first three days, stayed at Boscastle. Still haven’t looked through most of the images.

Boscastle was devastated in 2004, when the River Valency burst its banks in a flash flood, leaving many residents stranded in their buildings, washing away the bridge and tossing around cars as if they were toys. The area is now restored to its former beauty after a major rebuild and refurbishment effort. Forrabury Stitches are ancient cultivation strips which have been farmed this way since Medieval times. They are situated on the clifftops above Boscastle village. Along the same coast, Trebarwith Strand is a favourite place for families and surfers.

Saddleworth Project

For the last couple of weeks I’ve taken every opportunity to get out with my camera around Saddleworth as my personal project on the area is almost complete. It’s been difficult, in what must have been the wettest summer in decades, to get out and get the photographs I needed. The winter photographs are already in the bag – lots of snow and clear, clean winter days. Autumn is brief here – a few wet days and the turning leaves just disappear, so I hope to catch a few shots next month. Dawn pictures I find especially a challenge – I did get up at 6 am one day last week but the sun failed to appear on cue, so I went back to bed – that’s the advantage of taking photographs around home, I guess.

Here are a few from the last week.

Primrose Bank

Work is well underway to demolish the crumbling 1960’s estate of flats and maisonettes at Primrose Bank, Oldham. Mike and I were asked by the Gateways to Oldham project team, to get involved with the photography recording the re-generation of the area with their official photographer Peter W. What a way to spend Bank Holiday Monday! Peter, Mike and I spent Monday afternoon in and around the area, photographing the demolition works and local people. Peter has been photographing this project for some time now and already has over 17,000 images of the area. My 100 or so looks a bit puny in comparison. But here are a few of my images from the shoot. In processing them, I decided to concentrate on bringing out just one colour, usually brown or orange to make a cohesive set of images and give a warm feel to the area…I was very much out of my comfort zone but really enjoyed the experience and hope to do some more before the project is over.

When re-gerneration is complete, the Gateway to Oldham project will deliver 200 new homes for rent or purchase.

Victoria Baths

We were in the first group of visitors to the baths after stage one of the renovations was completed in 2008.

Where has the summer gone?

Just wondering where all my time has gone this summer!

Image making seems to have taken a back seat too.

Out of season

First for April

Out of Season

HDRi comparison…Photomatix Pro vs Picturenaut…a first look

HDRi software has been getting a bad press recently, perhaps due to some of the very extreme “surrealistic” images that are readily found on the web and in particular on Flickr. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The more subtle combinations of multiple exposures of a scene can produce a beautiful and more realistic result. In my quest for the best in HDRi software, I’ve been taking a look at Picturenaut.

Picturenaut is open source software being developed by HDRlabs. See their latest news. When you download the software, which is completely free (though a donation is welcome), there is a pdf file that you can download to show how to install it and basics of use. This proved to be very well written and easy to follow.

Using the same tree, photographed in 5 shots with 1 exposure between each, I made a comparison between PhotomatixPro and Picturenaut conversions. Picturenaut aligned and combined the images a little faster than Photomatix, though on just one testing I think it would be unfair to say that this would always be the case. The Picturenaut controls were easy to use and the large preview enabled accurate control of the tone mapping. There are two global tone mapping interfaces, Photoreceptor Physiology, which is said to protect underlying colours beneath highlights, and Adaptive Logarithmic, which creates a smooth logathithmic compression. These are to be combined in a future version, but at the moment you have to choose one or the other. I used Photoreceptor Physiology. Once you have adjusted any of the sliders, the main image is quickly updated with the changes and I found it (on this image) much easier to achieve the result I was looking for than with Photomatix.

Reading around the subject tells me that the global tone mapping in Picturenaut does not carry with it the risk of severe haloes and surrealistic blends, which you can get with local tone mappers like Photomatix. So, the resulting blended image is more realistic. For those people who like the surrealistic blends of Photomatix, I would suggest that you won’t find those in Picturenaut. However, it is rumoured that, for those individuals wanting a more extreme blend of images, Picturenaut will, in fact be introducing a local tone mapping feature in a forthcoming version.

I imported the resulting tiff file into PhotoShop, where I carried out the same “finishing” to the image as I had with the Photomatix image, except for the sheep on the horizon, which I left in the Picturenaut version. The results are very close, see below.

Tree with PhotomatixPro

Tree with Picturenaut

The Photomatix sky is very slightly darker and more saturated. Cloud detail and contrast is also very slightly better in the Photomatix version. Fine detail of the branches and tree trunk is very slightly better in the Picturenaut image. Both exhibit a good crisp blend of the images (which were taken on a tripod but in strong wind).

In addition to HDRi production, Picturenaut also features “automatic image alignment, exposure correction, colour balancing, noise level compensation, automatic computation of the camera curve from the source images.” Additionally it offers 7 different interpolation options for resizing HDRs. There are a number of plugins available for Picturenaut, which I have not yet tried, including HDRShop plugins and a collection by Francesco Banterle.

This is a very first impression and I cannot say, with fairness, which software is better. I need to make some comparisons with more extreme variation of lighting.

However, I did find the Picturenaut experience more enjoyable – there is a real feel to what you are doing with the sliders and the preview gives a realistic view of the final image. I will certainly be looking more at Picturenaut and for those not wanting to buy Photomatix Pro, Picturenaut is a very real and very free alternative.

Dovestone Mist

Taken from the Holmfirth road above the Dovestones Valley.

HDR Panorama

Each of my HDR panos is 5 images deep, that is, 5 bracketed shots -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 stops each and usually 3-5 frames across.

I merge each 5 exposure frame into a single HDR image in Photomatics. I tone map that frame and leave it on screen whilst I prepare the next 5 exposure frame, which I then tone map alongside the first, so that I can balance the two frames together. I continue like this until all the frames of my panorama are now merged into single tone-mapped files which match as closely as possible in colour and tone. Once I am satisfied with the resulting tone-mapping, I then export the files as 32 bit tiffs and merge them to a single panorama. I will then tweak the panorama in PhotoShop until I am happy with the result.

Dovestones and Ashway Gap from Alderman

Knowle Top Farm, Greenfield

What can I say? It works for me.

Google Earth and HDRi

The tree was found by looking in fields on Google Earth (saves a lot of fuel driving round!). The mist was a gift on the way back home!

HDRi

Here’s a few more examples of HDRi – which I am really starting to enjoy. Having been put off by seeing a lot of very flat looking HDR photos elsewhere, I am finding that HDR doesn’t have to be like that…with only a little practice, it’s possible to process images to have good colour and contrast whilst retaining the benefits of HDR merging and tone-mapping.

For the benefit of those new to digital photography, HDRi stands for “High Dynamic Range image”. High Dynamic Range Imaging is a method to digitally capture and edit all light in a scene, from the brightest highlights to the deepest shadows and comes into its own when the contrast range in a scene is too high to capture in a single exposure without burning highlights or blocking up shadows. It represents a major leap in digital imaging technology. The good thing is you can do it with any camera that allows you to bracket or exercise manual control or compensation of exposure. That means yours!

If you are serious about photography, particularly landscape and low light photography, you will find that HDRi is the final step that places digital way ahead of analogue. You’ll never want to go back to film and wet processing again. The old problem of over/underexposure in analogue photography is a now thing of the past. A huge variety of subjects can now be photographed for the first time ever in fantastic detail, from high contrast stitched panoramas to church interiors…just think, you can now capture all the detail in the stained glass windows as well as the dimly lit interior. Wow!

How does it work?

Several bracketed shots are taken of the scene (preferably on a tripod, though I didn’t!!!). The underexposed shots will give full detail in the highlights and the overexposed shots full detail in the shadows. The middle exposure will be “average metering”.  Using the special “merge to HDR” feature in PhotoShop or other HDR software, a 32 bit image is created, containing the full range of tones, maybe up to 10 stops of information. Then comes the tricky bit….the 10 stops of information have to be constricted back down to about 5 stops, whilst retaining all that lovely highlight and shadow detail. An added spin-off is that noise in shadows becomes much less obvious and skies are shown in their fullest splendour.

A fairly simple explanation is given at http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/high-dynamic-range.htm – that saves me going into fine detail here.