Better Dynamic Range out of your Fuji (& any other camera)

For a long time the lack of dynamic range out of my digital camera's has been bothering me. Blown out skies with still underexposed foreground subject, no detail in shadows and lack of contrasts in the highlight parts of the images. Bracketing helps to get the best exposure, but even then the problems persists.

In the light of the announcement of the new Fuji CCD with increased dynamic range I sought for an alternative for most of my shots and found it here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

Blend an underexposed and overexposed photo to get one with much better dynamic range. I am very happy with the results, but being a lazy person I ordered Fred Miranda's DRI action as mentioned on the Luminous Landscape site. Here is a sample of what it can do:

http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/drisample

The exposure of the reference shot was the best I could do (tried my best). Most of the tones were in the right part of the histogram. The foreground subject was already getting a bit darker, but still the sky blew out.

The shot after the blending is superb. That is what the new SCCD is meant to do, but in most still life cases you can do it with any current Fuji as well, altough you do need Photoshop. The other methods can be done in other programs as well I think.

Let me know what you think. Hope this was useful information.

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Thanks, Sander.

How do you think it would work in this situation?

I'm been "contracted" to photograph my wife's art - for shows, web site, etc. Many of her recent painting have subtle color differences of light colors. I generally shoot them from a tripod using the auto-bracketing of the S602. Some colors are visible at the -1EV that are not at the 0EV & +1EV. Yet, my wife feels the -1EV shots are too dark (even to me they look too dark).

In some ways this seems like the same problem as your test photo, yet it's really not an over-exposure/under-exposure situation as much as a tone-gradation problem. Sometimes adjusting contrast in PS7 works, sometimes it does not.

Timothy Dunnigan
http://www.helpforfamilies.com/photos/index.htm
http://www.pbase.com/tdunnigan/

Azrifel said:

For a long time the lack of dynamic range out of my digital
camera's has been bothering me. Blown out skies with still
underexposed foreground subject, no detail in shadows and lack of
contrasts in the highlight parts of the images. Bracketing helps to
get the best exposure, but even then the problems persists.

In the light of the announcement of the new Fuji CCD with increased
dynamic range I sought for an alternative for most of my shots and
found it here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

Blend an underexposed and overexposed photo to get one with much
better dynamic range. I am very happy with the results, but being a
lazy person I ordered Fred Miranda's DRI action as mentioned on the
Luminous Landscape site. Here is a sample of what it can do:

http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/drisample

The exposure of the reference shot was the best I could do (tried
my best). Most of the tones were in the right part of the
histogram. The foreground subject was already getting a bit darker,
but still the sky blew out.
The shot after the blending is superb. That is what the new SCCD is
meant to do, but in most still life cases you can do it with any
current Fuji as well, altough you do need Photoshop. The other
methods can be done in other programs as well I think.

Let me know what you think. Hope this was useful information.

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Click to expand...

Azrifel said:

For a long time the lack of dynamic range out of my digital
camera's has been bothering me. Blown out skies with still
underexposed foreground subject, no detail in shadows and lack of
contrasts in the highlight parts of the images. Bracketing helps to
get the best exposure, but even then the problems persists.

In the light of the announcement of the new Fuji CCD with increased
dynamic range I sought for an alternative for most of my shots and
found it here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

Blend an underexposed and overexposed photo to get one with much
better dynamic range. I am very happy with the results, but being a
lazy person I ordered Fred Miranda's DRI action as mentioned on the
Luminous Landscape site. Here is a sample of what it can do:

http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/drisample

The exposure of the reference shot was the best I could do (tried
my best). Most of the tones were in the right part of the
histogram. The foreground subject was already getting a bit darker,
but still the sky blew out.
The shot after the blending is superb. That is what the new SCCD is
meant to do, but in most still life cases you can do it with any
current Fuji as well, altough you do need Photoshop. The other
methods can be done in other programs as well I think.

Let me know what you think. Hope this was useful information.

Click to expand...

Wow, that's pretty dramatic! If the F700 can do this with a click of a button, we'll all be happy.

By the way, I recently did a similar experiment with simply averaging two pictures taken one stop up and down. The differences were also noticeable but not as dramatic as yours. I guess the program does something more sophisticated than averaging.

I'd like to try this out..is anyone using a PSP workflow that they can share?

Stan

I’ve done this in the darkroom using high contrast transparency film to create the mask years before PhotoShop was even gleam in the developer eyes. It is a very time consuming process this way, but the results from the process are very rewarding.

Morris

Azrifel said:

For a long time the lack of dynamic range out of my digital
camera's has been bothering me. Blown out skies with still
underexposed foreground subject, no detail in shadows and lack of
contrasts in the highlight parts of the images. Bracketing helps to
get the best exposure, but even then the problems persists.

In the light of the announcement of the new Fuji CCD with increased
dynamic range I sought for an alternative for most of my shots and
found it here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

Blend an underexposed and overexposed photo to get one with much
better dynamic range. I am very happy with the results, but being a
lazy person I ordered Fred Miranda's DRI action as mentioned on the
Luminous Landscape site. Here is a sample of what it can do:

http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/drisample

The exposure of the reference shot was the best I could do (tried
my best). Most of the tones were in the right part of the
histogram. The foreground subject was already getting a bit darker,
but still the sky blew out.
The shot after the blending is superb. That is what the new SCCD is
meant to do, but in most still life cases you can do it with any
current Fuji as well, altough you do need Photoshop. The other
methods can be done in other programs as well I think.

Let me know what you think. Hope this was useful information.

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Click to expand...

There's also another program that can do this for you:

Look at:
http://www.multimediaphoto.com/photomatix/index.html

Azrifel said:

Blend an underexposed and overexposed photo to get one with much
better dynamic range. I am very happy with the results, but being a
lazy person I ordered Fred Miranda's DRI action as mentioned on the
Luminous Landscape site. Here is a sample of what it can do:

Click to expand...

It's a variation of a technique we've touched on here before in different ways - one where the foreground was too dark if the sky was right etc. so you take two exposures one each to get the sky right and one for the foreground and you blend the two using masks and also it looks to be a variation of the contrast mask technique which extracts detail in a duplicate layer and combines it back with the original. As search is down and 'my threads' no longer show them, this was the before and after I posted for that topic where I just manipulated two copies of the same thing and then blended them together - just to show it didn't matter if you'd only got one exposure at the time, you could still rescue something:





It stands to reason, you're just combining the best detail obtained from an underexposed and overexposed copy of the same thing. As morris said, they're all just digital variations of old (and considerably more time-consuming) darkroom techniques - hence the use of the word mask.

--
Fuji S602Z and 2800Z
http://www.peekaboo.me.uk

Stan said:

I'd like to try this out..is anyone using a PSP workflow that they
can share?

Click to expand...

I just don't have time to try it, but the tutorial looks as though it can easily be used in PSP the same - I can't see - at a glance - anything that looks PS specific, the basic techniques are common to both applications.

--
Fuji S602Z and 2800Z
http://www.peekaboo.me.uk

Timothy Dunnigan said:

Thanks, Sander.

How do you think it would work in this situation?

Click to expand...

I've been busy with a painting with very subtle tone gradations for an hour. The improvements were very small, almost unnoticeable. I blended both a +1/-1 and a 0/+1. The last one was the best.

It is hard to say, I almost cannot see it in the tones, so I cannot advise you on this issue.

Have you tried the method with the Gaussian blur on your own pics?

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Boo said:

Click to expand...

Nice!

Boo said:

It stands to reason, you're just combining the best detail obtained
from an underexposed and overexposed copy of the same thing. As
morris said, they're all just digital variations of old (and
considerably more time-consuming) darkroom techniques - hence the
use of the word mask.

Click to expand...

I've never seen a real darkroom, never touched a negative for any other reason than to put it away.

Correction, my father used to spend hours in the darkroom while I was crying in my bed two stairs up. He's got some great pictures of me.

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Hello Sander,

I appreciate your efforts. I'll likely obtain the action for outdoor scenes anyway. Your example and those on the LL site are convincing.

To what gaussian blur method are you referring?

Timothy Dunnigan

Azrifel said:

Timothy Dunnigan said:

Thanks, Sander.

How do you think it would work in this situation?

Click to expand...

I've been busy with a painting with very subtle tone gradations for
an hour. The improvements were very small, almost unnoticeable. I
blended both a +1/-1 and a 0/+1. The last one was the best.
It is hard to say, I almost cannot see it in the tones, so I cannot
advise you on this issue.

Have you tried the method with the Gaussian blur on your own pics?

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Click to expand...

Thanks Boo. I'll ty it out. It's so easy to get some bracketed shots with the 602. I think I'll look for a Photo Shop plug-in as they work in PSP too.

Stan

Timothy Dunnigan said:

Hello Sander,

I appreciate your efforts. I'll likely obtain the action for
outdoor scenes anyway. Your example and those on the LL site are
convincing.

To what gaussian blur method are you referring?

Click to expand...

In my first post in this thread is a link to the digital blending tutorial of Luminous landscape. He describes three methods, one with a lot of handwork, one with a blend & some gaussian blur applied and the Fred Miranda DRI action.

The DRI action uses another method compared to the other two mentioned.
I haven't tried the other two.

But when you get it anyway you can experiment on the paintings as well. I have seen some indoor shots improvement on clothing, better toning an detail in the shadow sides of a silk dress for example.

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Gosh, the increase in dynamic range in these shots appear to be much more dramatic than the few sample pics that Fuji posted comparing pics from the 3rd and 4th generation sensors (though the comparisons were not good to begin with). I wonder if the algorithm that Fuji is using to combine the images from the sensor pairs is optimal. Perhaps, the SRI action does a much more aggressive job.

In the future, it would be good if Fuji allowed the user to tweak the combination algorithm or added the option to store the pictures taken from the high and low sensitivity sensors separately for offline tweaking. Good idea?!

Azrifel said:

For a long time the lack of dynamic range out of my digital
camera's has been bothering me. Blown out skies with still
underexposed foreground subject, no detail in shadows and lack of
contrasts in the highlight parts of the images. Bracketing helps to
get the best exposure, but even then the problems persists.

In the light of the announcement of the new Fuji CCD with increased
dynamic range I sought for an alternative for most of my shots and
found it here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml

Blend an underexposed and overexposed photo to get one with much
better dynamic range. I am very happy with the results, but being a
lazy person I ordered Fred Miranda's DRI action as mentioned on the
Luminous Landscape site. Here is a sample of what it can do:

http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/drisample

The exposure of the reference shot was the best I could do (tried
my best). Most of the tones were in the right part of the
histogram. The foreground subject was already getting a bit darker,
but still the sky blew out.
The shot after the blending is superb. That is what the new SCCD is
meant to do, but in most still life cases you can do it with any
current Fuji as well, altough you do need Photoshop. The other
methods can be done in other programs as well I think.

Let me know what you think. Hope this was useful information.

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

Click to expand...

Stan said:

I'd like to try this out..is anyone using a PSP workflow that they
can share?

Click to expand...

I must admit I got bogged down the other day trying this out in PSP, I got it to work once using the images on the LL site, then couldn't replicate the exact work flow again. I was going to post a set of instructions, but got bored with trying to replicate it exactly, sorry.

I did however just use a quick and dirty variation of the principle for a particular web site image I was working on that worked well and that might have uses in some situations. The example I was working isn't suitable for posting here, but I found one of my own that will illutrate the point.

I opened the image, in this case it was too dark in some shadow foreground areas. I duplicated the image, (shift+D) and lightened one with curves, so that the shadow detail was better. I then copied the dark one and pasted it as a new layer over the light one (right click the bar at the top of the image and choose the menu option) and then simply rubbed out the dark one in the areas where I thought it was too dark and this revealed the lighter detail below. When satisfied, I merged the two layers, resized etc.

It might work well in examples like this where the dark detail is soft at the edges and the areas are indistinct. I like the idea of erasing like this as you can simply right click and put it back if you go too far. There are other ways of achieving the same results, but it seemed deliciously simple.

Before first, then after:





--
Fuji S602Z and 2800Z
http://www.peekaboo.me.uk

George Chen said:

Gosh, the increase in dynamic range in these shots appear to be
much more dramatic than the few sample pics that Fuji posted
comparing pics from the 3rd and 4th generation sensors (though the
comparisons were not good to begin with). I wonder if the algorithm
that Fuji is using to combine the images from the sensor pairs is
optimal. Perhaps, the SRI action does a much more aggressive job.

Click to expand...

The Fuji sensor and its sofware are developed to equal the dynamic range of film. The DRI action goes a little beyond that to try to match the dynamic range of your eye.

George Chen said:

In the future, it would be good if Fuji allowed the user to tweak
the combination algorithm or added the option to store the pictures
taken from the high and low sensitivity sensors separately for
offline tweaking. Good idea?!

Click to expand...

It could be useful. The advantage is that the new Fuji will take one exposure for two photodiodes/pictures at the same time. That could make the DRI useable for action/motion as well.

--
Sander [Fuji602 SonyP1]
http://www.azrifel.org
http://www.pbase.com/azrifel/

George Chen said:

In the future, it would be good if Fuji allowed the user to tweak
the combination algorithm or added the option to store the pictures
taken from the high and low sensitivity sensors separately for
offline tweaking. Good idea?!

Click to expand...

I think RAW mode will give you exactly that possibility. Think about it: the raw image size is over 12 MB, thus exactly 6 MPixels x 2 (low+middle and high light levels pair) plus any additional info (overall about 12.6 or 12.9 MB - don't remember exactly). Sure with appropriate software the whole thing is easily splittable into two images. I even expect this would be implemented by Fuji itself in their bundled software (well, at least in version 2.0 I hope

-V-