photos: GRD4 - it has it's limits

I'm feeling a bit frustrated that I can't achieve what I have in mind with my GRD4. It's not the camera's fault, it's inherent in the nature of vision and representation, I think. There is a subtlety of tonal gradation which simply requires more pixels and perhaps more levels within those pixels... the reason why an 8x10 sheet of film will present a quality that is not possible with 35mm - it's the same issue.

These are images I shot the day before yesterday (Arizona high desert) and I think they require a bigger format. The subtleties of tonality that Joel Meyerowitz captured in "Cape Light" with his 8x10 are just the things I find I can't quite pull off here. Sigh.

These all have some manipulation of various things with Lightroom 4.0

Comments welcomed and appreciated.

















P.S. I think that I am pushing the "vibrance" and "saturation" in an attempt to achieve that delicious tonality which only more bit depth will reveal, and then it just ends up looking phony. But without it the images are too flat and dull. But of course I could be totally wrong and someone can set me straight and point me in another direction. Have at it.

Such bright light is hard to shoot in. You may consider bracketing. But a small sensor camera will never reach what 8x10 can accomplish. Sadly, a lot of others work that inspires my own is also large format film and I can quite reach within the realms they produce.

I've been happy with the tonality of the GXR A16.

Look pretty good to me.

I was looking at a couple of mine i shot earlier, Very detailed woodland, and i spotted quite a bit of smearing in the distant trees. But it is a compact camera. A very good compact camera. If all i was ever going to do was landscapes i would put up with the bulk of a full frame outfit. The GRD is what it is. and it does what it was designed to do.
You have to agree it does it well.
Your picture are great, and would look great on your wall at perhaps 16in.

Have you tried the Positive film setting with a high contrast? Will that help on what you are trying to get out of the picture?

They look good to me as well. A few things to try, admittedly none of which really address the tonal gradation problem:

For harshlight, use the expanded dynamic range feature. I'm not sure if I have the exact name right but this features works on RAW files (though it will increase the min ISO you can use).

Look up the Canyon Conondrum. It's a concept (and method) developed by Dan Margulis and described in his Photoshop Lab Color book to achieve better color "separation" in subjects (such as red, redder, and reddest canyons) and better mimicking the way the human eye and brain perceives color and does that color "separation" automatically. This requires Photoshop (or equivalent) to work on the LAB color space.

Ultimately, as you mentioned, I don't think you ca get the tonal gradation with the GRDIV that you would get with a larger sensor.

Thanks for that suggestion. Our eye and mind can "correct" what the film and sensor might not. Every photograph is a translation, even those great large format images. Your images and insights are excellent. You have to find what that camera can handle/translate best and work from there. I'd rather see some variation in the cameras out there-they are already so much alike.

I don't know if the scenes lend themselves to this, but if the DR of the scene is lower than the DR that your camera is capable of capturing, exposing to the right can help you make maximum use of the large number of values available in the highest stops. Did you try that?

v_roma said:

Look up the Canyon Conondrum. It's a concept (and method) developed by Dan Margulis and described in his Photoshop Lab Color book to achieve better color "separation" in subjects (such as red, redder, and reddest canyons) and better mimicking the way the human eye and brain perceives color and does that color "separation" automatically. This requires Photoshop (or equivalent) to work on the LAB color space.

Click to expand...

I'd not even thought of this. Great idea. Thanks. I have that book.

Several people have mentioned dynamic range, but for most of the shots that has not been the issue I'm concerned with. Only two of the above had really large dynamic range issues. By the way, I'm finding more and more that when I shoot in manual mode and use my lightmeter diligently I am getting much better (more accurate) exposures than simply letting the camera try and figure it out. And often the live histogram doesn't help as much as I might think it would as there will be some high end stuff which will be so small in quantity as to not show up on the histogram but are things I still want to retain detail in. So thoughtful use of the meter seems to give me more consistently usable images in "shooting to the right" but not blowing out the highlights. Lee Varis's book "Mastering Exposure and the Zone System for Digital Photographers" is helpful in getting a handle on precise exposure control.

I was confused about the DR features of this camera. I was not sure they worked on RAW files, which I always shoot, if possible. That is one of the things I find frustrating about the GRD4 and it's manual, there is no clear distinction as to which features will work only in one mode or the other (RAW vs. JPG) and this often trips me up. Another three years of shooting with this camera and I'll probably have it figured out. ;-)

Thanks to all of you for your thoughts on this issue. Now if only Lightroom could work in LAB space. I love the idea of non-destructive processing and being able to do all of my work within one program. But that will probably always remain a pipe dream.

The bottom line is that I LOVE THIS CAMERA, but it is designed for a certain kind of work and I can't expect it to do things outside of it's design parameters.

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