Transforming an Ugly Duckling

As Shot

I haven’t written much about HDR yet. I honestly have preferred to leave the HDR to the Lab and encourage everyone to be taking better pictures.

I’ve also emphasized shooting in RAW mode always. Since I started shooting RAW over 2 years ago, everything I shoot with the DSLR’s is RAW.

I also have deleted very few images since. Yes, there are a lot of them that are too dark, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete them. Instead I put them in cryogenic sleep till there is technology in the future that might take these images and turn them into masterpieces.

To the right you can see an example of transforming an ugly duckling.

Masterpieces ?

After HDR Processing

LOL, yes I exaggerate. But not as much as you might think. I’ve been going back over the thousands of images I have stored and have begun processing many of them using HDR.

As my technique improves and I find new ways of rendering images I sometimes go back and reprocess images I thought even HDR couldn’t salvage only to find with new settings they not only were salvaged but turned out to be remarkable.

HDRogenics

Yes, I do believe that is a new term.  I did make that up.  But even so there are some images you shouldn’t save.  Even though I have thousands of images in storage I delete the ones that are out of focus or blurred because I moved the camera.  Unless you have some artistic reason for keeping a hopelessly blurred image, delete them.  I often do in the camera before I ever download them to the computer.  Sometimes I can’t tell on the camera screen.  But when I view them, and they are blurred, I delete them.  I recommend you do the same.

But if it isn’t out of focus or blurry, (that’s in focus but moved, there’s a difference?) you might want to put those images in cryogenic storage for a shot at them in the future.

Tags: HDR Processing, Shooting RAW

White Balance and Light

I’ve talked before about the advantages of shooting RAW, especially for listing photos.  One of the big advantages is the ability to change the white balance.

White Balance Auto

Most of us don’t want to have to think about the light in which we are shooting.  We move in and out from indoor, outdoor, cloudy, shade and direct sunlight.  We set our camera to White Balance Auto and let the camera make the decision for us.  Sometimes it guesses WRONG.

If you are shooting RAW you can change the White Balance in post processing.  If it guesses wrong and you are shooting in JPG, there is no going back, that white shirt that appears Yellow can’t be made white like it was.  There is no “Bleach” brush to paint on the shirt.  It is possible to tweak it with a little or a lot of work, but why.  Shoot RAW and it isn’t an issue.

Shooting Indoors in Mixed Light

But what do you do when you are shooting a listing and the room has three or more kinds of light?  There are choices to be made.  I’ll give you some tips on what to look for and things you can do when shooting indoors in mixed light in the next post.

Tags: mixed light sources, Shooting RAW, white balance

Shooting RAW

When Shooting RAW

Shoot RAW Leaves Your Cooking Options Open

When shooting RAW all the data from the shot the sensor collected is saved.  When you save in JPG or JPEG there is “clipping” going on to compress the file size so it is smaller.  This compression process picks the data by a mathematical algorithm to decided what data to keep and what to discard.

Among photographers there is an ongoing discussion about the advantages or lack there of of shooting Raw vs JPG.  One of the best I’ve run across is Raw vs JPEG.  But when it comes to creating an exceptional listing image.  There is nothing that can replace the detail garnered from a RAW image file.

While RAW image files are large they provide the best results for HDR processing.  They also allow the greatest flexibility in post processing.  White balance, color settings, just about anything you can think of can be changed (with the exception of focus) and that can be improved when shooting RAW.

If you are only a casual photographer and not interesting in spending time post processing your images, shooting RAW probably isn’t for you.  But if you want maximum ability to post process your images, then RAW is the way to go.

For me, I don’t like having to go back and reshoot a room because I under exposed it in the camera.  When shooting RAW it isn’t an issue.

Tags: RAW Files, Shooting RAW