big wave surf photos with EM5-II and Panasonic 100-300

These were taken a few days ago during a large swell on Maui.  There were surfers, stand up paddle boarders, windsurfers, and kiteboarders all riding the waves.  I was low on a cliff so there was a lot of spray and mist which reduced contrast on many photos.  Here are a few of the better ones.

Windsurfer Robbie Naish

Kai Lenny on a SUP

Surfers taking a beating

Having lived twenty-seven years in Hawaii, surf shots is one thing I do miss and one thing in very short supply here in Colorado, my home of the last nearly eighteen years. These are quite nicely done, so thank you for sharing these.

2chicos wrote:

I especially like this one.

Jeff

Nicely done.  With all the news on the new long lenses, the 100-300 lens keeps chugging along and can do great work with someone skilled using it.  Were these cropped? What was your keeper rate on this set? When I use my EM5 and the panasonic lens, I keep about 25-30%, the rest are missed AF and just missing the subject during the action.  I wonder if the new lenses will increase the keeper rate?

No text.

Nice shots! They simply need a quick Levels adjustment.

The catches are very dramatic but I agree with others that they are too dark, roughly 1-1/2 stops. Level adjustment or increasing the exposure would be easy.

These SO MUCH make me want to return to HI for waves and surf shooting! Thanks for posting.

Our last trip was at the end of 2013, when we went to the North Shore Oahu pretty much to shoot the surf. It was my first real surfing shooting, and I quite loved it. Here are two of my favorites (apologies: I've probably posted these somewhere here before).

We printed this large, and it got into a juried show.

Jamie O'Brian - I think On Waimea Bay

The first especially did take a fair amount of post-processing. Mostly the usual suspects: levels, contrast, saturation, curves ... My wife does the post-processing so I can't give you details. (Actually, I'm not sure she could help, either. It's all in her fingers...

I'm thinking the Panny 100-400 is in my future. I don't think I an afford the Oly 300 f/ 4.

Here's an edited version, showing some of what could be done.

1) Set white and black points (by shift clicking whites and black levels)

2) Reduced haze using Dehaze (+25)--brings out clarity but also increases blue cast

3) Added a bit of clarity to bring out mid-tones (+20) and increase contrast between surfers and waves

4) Reduced highlights a bit (-470) to bring out texture in white water

5) Sharpened a bit (sharpening: 74, detail 64, masking 28 (didn't want to sharpen grain or mot of the water) to increase visibility of surfers

You can try these individually and see which effects you like. I personally prefer more detail and a bit more contrast.   One does notice, however, vertical banding on the left of the image.

Had I been doing this myself, I would have used the adjustment brush to make many of these as local rather than global edits, but wanted to do something quick. Whole process took about one minute.

I bought the 100-300 a year ago specifically to take some surf pix here in the SOUTH Pacific -- and just haven't been able to get my stuff together to get them!

Haze -- does your image processor have Dehaze? Might be worth a try. I ran a little test with your first pic using Dehaze in Photoline (my regular processor) and it enhanced the pic nicely, I thought.

2chicos wrote:

Thank you Ronald, this looks good and is very helpful. Are you using Lightroom? The maximum value for highlight recovery is -100. If I shift and double click to set the black level it is very aggressive and adds -78; the water looks extremely dark, more than your example. I can see how better level processing can recover the highlights better. This is very helpful. Thanks.

Yes, Lightroom CC.

The first action you should take is to set black and white levels by shift clicking black and white sliders in the top tone panel as you have done. You can always back off of the values suggested--set the black level to roughly what you remember the water looking like--or, if trying to improve contrast, to a darker level for black and a lighter level for white. Reducing highlights also bring back detail in the lightest portions of the image (like foam in the waves.)

Changing clarity and adding Dehaze will also change the perceived brightness/darkeness of the mid-tones, and as I noted earlier, too aggressive Dehaze will add a blue cast to the image overall. I often counteract this a) by using the adjustment brush to apply Dehaze only to those image elements really needing it and b) reducing the blue color cast in the color temp slider by backing off blue and moving the slider slightly to yellow. But in a surf scene, that probably isn't necessary.

Ensure that your monitor is roughly color calibrated, too---and experiment. LR makes it quite easy.