Here's why D700 is a superb landscape camera

[RBFresno]

http://www.pbase.com/rbfresno/profile

 

[brick33308]

I've only used NX2 a little, but I don't think you can create luminosity masks with it. What you can do is drop control points that let you adjust brightness in selected areas of an image - sort of a rough version of what a luminosity mask achieves but not nearly the same degree of control.

Spend some time hanging out in the retouching forum. You'll be surprised how quickly photoshop will become de-mystified for you.
--
http://brick.smugmug.com/

 

[Mojn]

You indicated the shot was challenging DR-wise but still it seems the exposure is pretty far off, almost as if exposed to protect the specular highlight reflecting off the water. Perhaps I'm underestimating the DR of the scene?

Yes exposure is pretty far off what the camera suggests - that's the way it is. I bracketed this and chose the -2½EV to work with. I had a -3½EV exposure with no blown highlight but it cost too much on the shadows. In a scene with extreme direct or reflected sun it's necessary to blow a few highlights.

Yes the scene is challenging and DR is extreme and I think the unprocessed first image shows that.

 

[Mojn]

What did you have to do to bring the photo back? simple adjustment of levels or curve? an exotic "curve" adjustment? dodge the hot spot while bringing up the rest of the photo?

Here I used LR recovery and the Adjustment Brush to select the areas I wanted to lift exposure for. I do use dodging sometimes. Or fill light (carefully). Or Photomatix (carefully).

Also, why isn't the camera taking a good photo in the field? Is it just the hot spot reflection that is throwing off the exposure?

No camera can capture an image like the final one shown out of the box.

I'm also curious as to how dark it was out -- not that this info tells us anything photographically, but with just your eyss, was it bright enough to walk around without tripping on stuff? or was it so dark you needed a flashlight?

The light was pretty much like you see in the final image.

 

[Deleted-pending]

very good exemple of Digital DR capacity.

1 day ago I tried to shoot 3 shots of the same situation bellow with my small 10MP D40X camera, the goal was to blend the 3 exposures & get a HDR picture. The result was really bad because of the motion blur due to the wind on the bushes.

I Finally took the image which was well exposed for the sky & tried some shadow recovery & post prod :

original from NEF :



postprod from NEF :

 

[Austin Li]

--
Austin

Photography is one of the ways to get myself relaxed from occupation stress.

 

[Deleted-pending]

Sure, First, use a good tripod, than shoot in raw mode at 100 iso (very important), expose for the lights, than use nikon NX2 & go to quick fix panel.

play with the shadow recovery, add a bit of contrast, some advanced D-lighting & some u-points up to your taste. dont forget to sharpen the whole image ad the end. (but not too much)

 

[landmarks4711589173]

Just want to share and discuss.

Difficult light like this is quite common when you shoot landscape with UWA. In this example I had a slightly burned highlight and a pitch black background. I did bracket but I found the image was unclear when I used multiple exposures.

The final image will print A3 I think. But it's not a free lunch, it takes a lot of careful PP, and preserving detail and true color in the lifted shadows (at a fine art level) is not always possible.

I wonder why there is not any complaint about vertical banding at low iso when people do this processing on Nikon,

while on 5D2 the low iso banding is the main issue, a lot of people were complaining about.

 

[pc168]

Wow, good job! My skill of PP is not good. But I do shoot NEF only.

 

[RolfEn]

There's banding on Nikon cameras as well. Perhaps less pronounced, but there is still banding present.

My D700 has quite a bit of it.

 

[RomanJohnston]

with my D300?

Just wondering....you found a decent way to get the DR back, but I do this even with D2X files....and with files like your example. I prefer to do a DR blend, but can easily do this with most any current camera.

Roman
--
Warning....Follow my advice at your own risk.
I dont know my aperture from a hole in the ground.

http://www.pbase.com/romansphotos/

 

[Mojn]

with my D300?

No

Just wondering....you found a decent way to get the DR back, but I do this even with D2X files....and with files like your example. I prefer to do a DR blend, but can easily do this with most any current camera.

No, but my intention was not to compare D700 to other cameras. I'd like to discuss D700 for landscape work.

 

[RomanJohnston]

Just making sure that people reading this don't think that their older camera is not capable of such Post Processing or good for landscape work.

The D700 IS a great landscape camera...one of many available.

Roman

with my D300?

No

Just wondering....you found a decent way to get the DR back, but I do this even with D2X files....and with files like your example. I prefer to do a DR blend, but can easily do this with most any current camera.

No, but my intention was not to compare D700 to other cameras. I'd like to discuss D700 for landscape work.

--
Warning....Follow my advice at your own risk.
I dont know my aperture from a hole in the ground.

http://www.pbase.com/romansphotos/

 

[RomanJohnston]

The HDR like effect has removed the contrast to the point of why I really dont like HDR. After tone mapping, if you want realizim, you need to re-introduce contrast queues the human eye expect to be there. Otherwise it is less realistic.

In this case contrast clues were re-established...but in a strange way....the clouds look unnatural and the colors are...well unnatural as well. Nothing like I would expect to see in nature.

But then if thats what your going for...cool...artistic perogitive. But not my cup of tea.
--
Warning....Follow my advice at your own risk.
I dont know my aperture from a hole in the ground.

http://www.pbase.com/romansphotos/

 

[Mojn]

Just making sure that people reading this don't think that their older camera is not capable of such Post Processing or good for landscape work.

No in fact old CCDs where very, very good at this. I'd not recommend a cropped CMOS for shadowlifting for someone who really needs it.

 

[Humanoid]

Just making sure that people reading this don't think that their older camera is not capable of such Post Processing or good for landscape work.

No in fact old CCDs where very, very good at this. I'd not recommend a cropped CMOS for shadowlifting for someone who really needs it.

I wouldn't hesitate lifting shadow detail with a d2x or d2xs. These two cameras were very capable and native iso 100 was excellent! Of course high iso lifted shadows would be noisy but who shoots high iso landscapes.

Some nice examples by the way!

I like tonemapping and using minimal settings and processs in nx2 and cs4.

peace,

Ray

 

[xjassa]

but not having personally used one, I'm really underestimating it.

I bumped my exposure on my D2h to actually mildly blow highlights because I was sick of the shadow noise that creeped in after pushing it 0.66 ev!

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven with the amount I can pull out of my D2x files -they are much more forgiving-, but I'm still exposing to the right because shadow noise bleeds in much sooner than I'd like. Now you can come up with that at -2 1/2ev?

Wonder if the wife would let me sell her car to get into a D3(s) / D700.....

 

[Muntz]

with my D300?

Well, I have both the D700 and D300 and I see at least one more stop of info that you can pull out of shadows with the former. I had the D2x as well, and there was just no comparison to the D700 in what you could pull out of the shadows. I used to bracket all the time, and now I find I can get away with layer blending from a single raw or just use dodge/burn (which was all but useless in CS3).
--

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that believe there are two kinds of people and those that don't.

 

[RomanJohnston]

About one stop.

It is very usable, but not earth shattering.

It does make that aspect of landscape work very nice for the D700.

My only point was that there are some very competent DX and FF cameras out there for landscape work....

And that the D700 isnt a magic bullet.

Its jsut one of the many capable (and probably one of the better ones) landscape choices out there.

And the OP is correct....it does a good job with this kind of work.

Roman
--
Warning....Follow my advice at your own risk.
I dont know my aperture from a hole in the ground.

http://www.pbase.com/romansphotos/

 

[Deleted-pending]

interesting.Why diid they adpot CMOS in all new gen camera ? It seems CCD is a much better solution for the video purpose as well (no jelly effect). This is weird.
A 3CCD FF camera would be a Killer camera.