Some High Contrast Images Shot Along The Creek Sunday Morning

[Greg Chappell]

Sunday morning was really pretty. A beautiful day to go for a walk and do some picture-taking along Turtle Creek with the exception my favorite type weather has always been light to moderate overcast so I'm not having to deal with lots of shadows and highlights like yesterday.

With the new sensor in the E-M5 and the latest Pens, it's amazing what one can do with the raw files as long as you expose for the highlights. Moderate highlight recovery is possible, but boy have shadows always been a problem and now, one can raise the holy heck out of shadow values in post processing with no noise/grain penalty.

Two images where I took it to the extreme are the first two I'm posting below. Direct backlight (lens shade did a great job keeping the lens covered and the image free of any flare) with lots of deep shadows. You can imagine having to shade your eyes from the sun and looking back to a scene like these. I exposed for the highlights, making most of the image look just way too dark, which I ignored as I looked through the EVF. Watched the histogram and adjusted the exposure until the highlights were just about to touch the right side of the graph and took the shot.

Opened the files in ACR, adjusted the mid tones down a little using the exposure compensation slider, then turned the shadows and black sliders both up in the 70-80 range, just a crazy amount. Turned down the highlights slider a little bit and I was looking at images that looked almost exactly as I saw it when I pressed the shutter release. These were also a good test for the new 17mm f1.8 M. Zuiko. I love the 35mm equivalent semi-wide angle of view. This is probably going to be the lens I use the most on my upcoming trip.





Turning with my back to the sun the colors were much better as one would expect. Processing still went much as above as the contrast was still very much in play, just without having to jump the blacks and shadow sliders into the nuclear correction mode as I did with the above two..





I don't know if he still lives in this house, but Troy Aikman was the one who built it...

[ramcewan]

nice detailed description of your post processing steps.

I also really like the 35mm equivalent fov afforded by the new 17mm, I can see it is just about right for getting the scene but not making it too wide where the eye has trouble taking it all in.

[boBBrennan]

....'twas a nice day, I went by Lake Arlington but did not get out of the car, I was just not in the mood.

These are really excellent results, the view is just right. I especially like the verticals.

I gotta get out! I gotta get out! I gotta.......... well, I do.

[Greg Chappell]

Bob, I am paying for getting out too much on Saturday. I walked a trail down at the Trinity Audobon Center along the Trinity River in the early afternoon and have not been able to stop sneezing ever since.

[drew881]

Thanks for the description of the processing as well. Very useful to know.

[Greg Chappell]

I bought the E-M5 about two months after returning from Paris last year. In retrospect I really wish I had had it on that trip. Several images captured with the E-P3, exposing the scene just like I did with these, I really could have done a lot more with shadow values than I was able to do with the E-P3 files. A setting of 70-80 on the blacks and/or shadows slider would have revealed so much speckled noise in E-P3 files where it just does not exist in E-M5 files, and I only had the noise filter in ACR set to 15, my usual setting for ISO 200 images.

[boBBrennan]

Yep, E-P3 'files-in-the-dark' don't work out well. I find that for me my E-3 data are many times easier to manipulate. I'm getting anxious but committed to waiting until a new camera is done, then deciding.

[James Emory]

You have an E3, that is still a pretty darn nice camera.

Originally Posted by boBBrennan

Yep, E-P3 'files-in-the-dark' don't work out well. I find that for me my E-3 data are many times easier to manipulate. I'm getting anxious but committed to waiting until a new camera is done, then deciding.