Camera + Lens + Tripod

Random comments in the YouTube video about my new Canon 60D and using the Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HSM. Also discussions about 3aeb vs 9aeb and Canon’s 1D/1Ds 7aeb custom functions.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma7TUysv7l8[/youtube]

Topics discussed:

Canon 60D
Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HSM
Nikon D3
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G
Promote Control
1D / 1Ds AEB functions
3aeb sucks

Toning vs Tonemapping

Posted on December 8, 2010 by admin

Less than a month ago Christian Bloch of HDRLabs.com communicated something to me I’d like to share with all of you (us HDR nuts). The nutshell of what he is proposing is that we all start using the term “Toning” vs “Tonemapping” when referring to finessing high dynamic range files (images).

I’ve always viewed all of this as a pipeline. A high dynamic range imaging pipeline which consists of everything from capture to post processing 32 bit files. However, thanks to flickr and photographers worldwide, the term HDR has been used to describe a look instead of the process. I’ll cut and paste the email now because I think he makes a good point and good case for differentiating now before things get set in stone forever!

In case you are not familiar with Christian, he wrote what I consider to be “THE” reference manual for understanding HDRI and file formats as well as various workflows. His book was “The HDRI Handbook”. I say “was” because the publisher sold every copy and it is out of print. It even printed in a ton of languages, not just english. It was that good. The book is getting a bit dated when looking at certain chapters, but was bleeding edge stuff when released. It is still an amazing reference. The Second Edition is in the works as he describes here.

The Second Edition of “The HDRI Handbook” will most certainly be a must have text when released in 2011.

Back to HDR terminology and Christian’s take on “Toning”. The email exchange…

—————————-

Hey Michael,

I have an issue I would like to discuss with you.

As I’m reworking the tonemapping chapter of the next version of the hdri handbook, I have come across the necessity to redefine some terms. What bothers me is that everybody keeps using the term “HDR” for tonemapped images. The latest DxO escapade is prime example for that. It’s the good old mixup of the result and the technique, and I believe it’s largely based on the fact that photographers just don’t have a better term than “HDR”.

Tonemapping has an awfully technical ring to it, and I cannot condemn a photographer to rather label an image “HDR” instead of “tonemapped”. And if you really look at it, even most researchers see tonemapping as a technical challenge, not a creative one. Therefore, I propose to split the term, or rather redefine the thing that photographers do with an HDR image as “Toning”. It’s a tiny twist, but it has a better chance to survive linguistically when someone says “toned surreal” or “toned naturally”.

So, Tone-Mapping may be the broader term. It remaps an HDR image to the tonal values available in a target medium. But when a photographer is toning an HDR image, he uses tonemapping operators or whatever means necessary to purposely adjust the appearance to meet his expectations. Tonemapping would be the technical process, but “toning it right” is the creative challenge.

I have discussed this already with Greg Ward, who actually appreciates a distinction like that. His only concern would be that the term “toning” might be overly occupied by the Sepia toning and the like. Personally, I see no confusion here, instead I rather see a chance of “toning” in the sense of creating a targeted look to sink in very easily.

What do you think?

—————————-

[[[ My reply cut and pasted ]]]

I’m completely unfamiliar with sepia toning as a term. He may be right. However, I really like the idea. I say we just start redefining the process of tonemapping with your “toning” concept. Like you said in a sentence above.. ”…. when a photographer is toning an HDR image, …” That makes sense to me and sounds better than the harsher “Tonemapping”.

I doubt we’ll get Flickr folks to retag their HDRs though

Plus who knows, maybe in 10-15 years there will be 32 bit displays and we won’t be remapping for 8 bit viewing and then we’d only be “Toning” the HDR file ;) So your term is future proof.

I’ll run with it if you do.

—————————-

Now what prompted me to post this tonight is a post by Marshall Cant about HDRI. This posted on the blog by a company that does film to digital scanning oddly enough. The Sensor Range chart I had posted recently was referenced on their site hence how I found it posted.

The blog post is a good write up about where we are going from their viewpoint. A pretty good handle on the technology. The blog post is titled and linked here: HDR: THE INEXORABLE MARCH TOWARD PHOTOGRAPHY’S HOLY GRAIL

Probably my favorite paragraph from Marshall’s post is a reference to early HDR:

“Circa 1850: The idea of using several exposures to fix a too-extreme range of luminance was pioneered as early as the 1850s by Gustave Le Gray to render seascapes showing both the sky and the sea. Such rendering was impossible at the time using standard techniques, the luminosity range being too extreme. Le Gray used one negative for the sky, and another one with a longer exposure for the sea, and combined the two in a single picture in positive.”

HDR Express quick take

Posted on December 6, 2010 by admin

Today Unified Color released HDR Express.
http://www.unifiedcolor.com/hdr-express

It might seem like a watered down version of HDR Expose / 32 Float… and that would be true in terms of the tools to use in the user interface, but the underlying code is revolutionary in HDR Express (in terms of Unified Color’s family of HDR apps).

If you download the trial today and test it out… and you own HDR Expose / 32 Float, then your first reaction will be “bugger“. Because you’ll want that wicked fast, halo free quality in HDR Expose / 32 Float. Here’s the good news… unified color just put their own Expose/32 Float apps on the endangered HDR species list. They have no choice now but to get the underlying code from Express into HDR Expose / 32 Float as fast as they can. Its pretty obvious. They have to. And when they do, those apps will be much better than they already are now.

My brief take away bullet points would be…

PROS

1. HDR Express is easily 2 to 4 times faster than HDR Expose and/or 32 Float.

2. Halo free tonemapping without the waiting times in HDR Expose / 32 Float.

3. Dynamic Range Mapping by default (Express is idiot proof and auto tonemaps the range you feed it)

4. Simple to use thumbnails to choose from over to under exposed starting points.

CONS

1. Still does not allow me to pull in as much dynamic range as using my proprietary approach.

2. HDR Express was built for beginners and lacks all the extra (and useful) tools available in HDR Expose / 32 Float for high end tonemapping.

3. No batch processing (if its there… I missed it).

Last Call for HDR Training

Posted on November 28, 2010 by admin

Last call for HDR Training for Real Estate and Architectural Photography.

This offer expires December 1st!

Shooting and editing for real estate and architectural interiors is a whole different beast than landscapes and non-commercial work. The list of gotchas is long, here’s the short one.

You know the culprits… mixed lighting, massive dynamic range scenes most HDR apps choke on, reflections and glare, shooting directly at glass/windows/mirrors where flash is not an option, regaining window frames from massive back lit situations where light wrap causes loss of detail, shooting real estate with live talent in frame (no strobes), and on and on goes the list of fun shooting interiors.

I’ve been getting emails asking if they missed the launch of my HDR Training for Real Estate and Architectural Photography. You didn’t miss the official announcement… it’s getting closer, but right now only those in the initial beta group are getting the training videos.

Why is it taking so long to get the training finished? Simple,… because I am a working photographer.

Yes, it has been coming along slowly thusfar, but it is about to kick into high gear. I’ve cleared the decks for December. I am ONLY creating training during the month of December. The official launch of the HDR Training and when the site will go live is now targeting January (URL to be provided at time of launch).

The training I’m providing allows you to have access to me to ask questions via email and even via phone if we can match our schedules. Ditto via skype for out of the country english speaking folks. Hence why this training is not dirt cheap.

In fact one of the training videos already created and available for download now was created because one of the photographers in the beta group asked me to show how to incorporate live talent with HDR for an architectural interior product shoot. It is possible that one of your questions might end up turning into a video tutorial as well if I think it will benefit the group.

I’ve gotten emails from a few of you asking if you can join the beta now even though all the videos and training are not fully complete. The answer is yes, BUT only if you understand that there is no concrete date as to when all the videos will be done. The target is by the first week of January. Currently there are over two hours of training finished and available for download. They are 1280×720 hi quality H.264 movies for viewing on a computer.

Once all the videos are done it will encompass everything I do from capture to post. What is complete and available now are a handful of techniques that will be used in the full workflow/pipeline.

What is being shot this week is …. what I take to a shoot, do at a shoot (and why) and then I show you various workflows to edit in post. For post production, I’m showing various workflows that work on both Mac and PC. It is important to reiterate that the training I’m offering here is ongoing… as in perpetual. I say perpetual, but a more accurate statement would be that the training will continue until I no longer need to implement a hdri pipeline simply because in 10yrs it will probably all be done in camera and in one shot anyway.

Until then, I can promise you that you’ll always have my best imaging pipeline for High Dynamic Range Imaging. What I’m teaching will either slightly alter in the coming months or change completely. That means in the future I’ll need to create new videos to replace the current ones as I improve my workflow or find cool work arounds. Hence the reason this training is not dirt cheap.

As hot as HDR is currently and is getting, .. it virtually guarantees that new apps will appear or existing apps will get updated. I test the heck out of them and many of the companies creating them invite me to their betas so I usually have an opinion or a leg up on the apps when they release. I’ve found little workflow enhancements that you probably have not implemented yourself that will give you better results for editing in a HDRI pipeline. Some of what I’ve shown in the videos have already helped those currently in the beta group despite some of them being very experienced in HDR.

My current preferred pipeline for post production changed dramatically a couple of years ago and new ones have emerged as well. I have a few post production workflows I’ll be showing. One of which I use for what I call “quick turns“ where a realtor needs pics turned quickly and I have automation steps in that workflow. (This is a video that releases in about mid December).

Another workflow is going to show my pipeline for HDR Timelapse sequences shot for architectural interiors. And another two pipelines showing my highest level of quality for magazine level submissions. Many of my approaches are specifically geared for dealing with the nightmares of shooting architectural interiors.

“Been there done that“. I’m not bragging, just saying I’ve suffered more than you!!!

I’ve been shooting real estate using a high dynamic range imaging pipeline exclusively since 2005. I’ve run up against all the problems you likely already have yourself, or haven’t had the displeasure of experiencing yet. You don’t need massively expensive gear, but technique and post production are key.

I’m incredibly anal and I tinker with apps and new approaches all the time. Always looking for a more efficient pipeline. A few photographers that thought they had settled in for a workflow they created have either completely changed gears or implemented the tweaks I’ve shown them once I revealed some workflow enhancements. You’ll see.

I had nobody to learn from when I started with HDR, I just tinkered with every app there was and found ways to get commercially viable images. I never found anything online about HDR because in 2005 there wasn’t anyone using it exclusively for real estate. So I never knew some folks had created dos and don’ts and rules about bracketing. I would just test things out without fretting about what you are or are not supposed to do or how to treat RAWs or files in post. I would just think about what I needed to do to best exploit the scene and best compress the dynamic range down.

The video training is currently distributed via temporary download links from YouSendIt, etc. You just click the link and download the hi res videos to your computer for viewing. Eventually all of these will also be online once the website is live. The site isn’t online yet and as such neither is any online payment system. So if you’d like to join the beta, you can send me a check, pay via paypal, pay me by sending me an Amazon Gift Card, or pay via visa/mastercard through my business merchant account (either with a form I’d email for you to fill in and fax back or I could take your credit card info over the phone).

The emails I use for PayPal and Amazon are not the same as the one you’d email me to join the beta. So start by sending me an email asking about payment options to digitalcoastimage@gmail.com

———————————————-

To join the training with the rest of the beta group now, is $499.

The price for the same training when officially launched will be $750 per student (that’s not a typo).

I’ve already found that the amount of time I spend answering emails and phone calls warrants the tuition to be as such. And it is worth repeating again. The training is ONGOING.

Unified Color HDR Express

Posted on October 28, 2010 by admin

Unified Color announced their entry level HDR application today which is HDR Express. I am covered up creating training for my soon to launch HDR Training for Architectural Photography so I’ll simply link over to where I co-blog at HDRlabs.com for you to find other news Christian has linked up such as his review of Dolby’s Professional Reference Monitor the PRM-4200.

HDR Training for Architectural Photography

Posted on October 3, 2010 by admin

If you’ve been utilizing a High Dynamic Range Imaging workflow for Architectural Photography, then this might be for you. The training I’ve created won’t be linked from this website so email me if you want details (read on for details).

The training is specific to implementing HDR techniques. It is in no way, shape or form about how to frame your shots or anything along the lines of the business of architectural photography.

I’ve posted a full 24 minute review of one HDR application that I use mostly for HDR Timelapse. The video is not as structured as my training course, but it at least lets you hear my voice and get a feel for a new application in the process.

I’ve been putting together video tutorials for the last two months behind the scenes and I’m creating more in the next few weeks as well. All revolving around various workflows and strategies for capturing and editing high dynamic range scenes typical with shooting architectural photography (especially interiors).

Many of my clients are rental companies that rent condos and homes along the florida beaches where I live. Some of my rental company clients encourage me to over crank their shots to brighten the rooms up as well as over saturate the scenes slightly to create an emotive feel (their terminology, not mine). Hence why you’ll see some very heavily processed shots in this 120 image sample gallery of employing HDRI for Architectural Photography.

Even though the various workflows I’ll cover will focus on architectural interiors, the techniques are applicable to virtually any high dynamic range scene. I’ll also be covering landscapes and shooting / editing HDR Timelapse. This is an example of some HDR Timelapse I shot over the last year.

If you are interested in receiving notification about the training when available, email me using the email at the bottom of this page (from my main site) and title the email HDR Training or something similar.

I’ll be covering various workflows using various applications so it would be helpful if you tell me what operating system you primarily work on (Mac / PC and what version of operating system like 10.6 for OSX or say Windows XP Pro for PC). Also include what apps you currently use for typical raw processing workflow and what version of photoshop you are using as well as any 3rd party HDR plugins or applications you use.

HDR and Hard Drives

Posted on September 8, 2010 by admin

If you just started bracketing for HDR, you’ve no doubt you are starting to think more about storage and hard drives. Here’s something that just happened and I’ll share it in case you didn’t know yourself and hopefully save you the pain I just went through. It’s logical, but I missed the logic myself.

Don’t buy 2 or more identical hard drives (exact same model) from the same company at the same time. If the company received a batch of bad drives from the manufacturer, then you’ll be buying into that bad batch (this just happened to me). So either buy a variety of drives at once from one wholesaler or buy the same drive from multiple sites.

Lesson learned the hard way for me. I lost my main OS drive a couple weeks ago. I quickly ordered two highly rated hard drives from Newegg.com and had them rushed out to me. I used one as new OS drive and one as new data drive (internal). Both failed in the first week of use. Lesson learned. I should have bought two different drives at once as a bare minimum.

I have been told that most drives will either fail in the first 100 hours or after several years. I had heard various take offs of the early failures, but this is the first time it ever happened to me personally. Never a new drive, its always been after I beat the heck out of one for years.

Good news is that when I tweeted this mishap, I found out about Macsales.com from a few folks who took the time to email me. Because I’m both PC and Mac based I had always used Newegg for purchasing computer parts, but I’ll now try OWC out as well.

THE REAL RAW

I’ve ripped through close to 40 hard drives in about 5 years. All but six drives are still alive and working. They are mostly retired to USB external enclosure kits I’d put together and house them in for data retrieval once I’ve nearly filled them up as internal drives in either my MacPro or PCs. In the land of HDR, you’ll rip through hard drives.

For me personally, the true raw file is the merged .HDR/.EXR/.PSD(32bit) file. This may shock some of you, but for all my architectural shoots I destroy the raws about a month after the shoot is delivered. I usually do the following…

Merge all brackets and save as a 32 bit file. I lean towards .EXR, but if I did the merging in Photoshop I’ll first save a 32 bit .PSD file and then save as to a .EXR file. I do all my tonemapping and editing and about a month after the finals are delivered, I delete the RAWs from that shoot and keep only the finals the client got and the .HDR/.EXR/.PSD(32bit). Those 32 bit files are my “real raws” which I can go back and reprocess again and again.

Sometimes I’ll keep a middle exposure RAW just as a reference file, but not always. When shooting interiors even the middle exposure is not very worth while as a single raw because you’ll still have deep shadows and blown out highlights in that same file no matter how much you edit it in LightRoom or Aperture.

Now contributing on HDRLabs.com

Posted on August 9, 2010 by admin

I am pleased to announce that I will be contributing over at HDRLabs.com as a co-blogger. Christian Bloch (author of The HDRI Handbook) has invited me into his world of “HDR Nuts” as he calls it. I choose to view us as pixel warriors or digital knights. Regardless of the geeky analogies, the truth is we are all fighting the war on exposure and trying to defeat the same enemy. It is a challenge for photographers, cinematographers and VFX artists alike. I’m thrilled to be a part of the site and hope to make a positive impact in the months and years to come.

I do not plan to abandon this blog. I will likely mirror many of the posts over at HDR Labs here and I’m sure there will be times I want to discuss non-HDR information that might just be basic photography gear or such, and will post those here rather than clutter HDR Labs blog.

Many of you have also expressed interest in some form of training from myself and I have actually been working on a few projects at once so I’ll share what is going to emerge in the weeks and months ahead.

I have just crossed the threshold of having shot roughly 14,000 HDRs that I tonemapped into final JPEG/TIFF formats for commercial delivery for clients (mostly incredibly high dynamic range real estate scenes). Because of this extensive experience with tackling exposure day to day for going on 5 years now, I have a unique view of HDR from a production pipeline point of view. I’ve also shot and edited well over 1000 landscapes which were bracketed, merged to HDR and tonemapped, “for fun”. I’m quite familiar with the dos, don’ts and work arounds relating to HDR Capture and Post Processing.

That said, a few things are in the very early stages of planning for eBooks, Video Training, Workshops and/or One on One Training. These are the concepts I’m working on:

A beginner’s guide to HDR from my vantage point (from capture to final edit). I’ll cover the best HDR apps to merge to HDR and tonemap (on both the PC and the Mac).
Advanced techniques for going beyond basic tone mapping and extensively tweaking RAW images as a 1st step BEFORE merging to HDR. Also, how to utilize layers in 32 bit space in Photoshop “BEFORE” moving on to tonemapping or luminance blending techniques. How to sweeten and further enhance tonemapped TIFFs in Photoshop for perfect color clarity and color balance of mixed lighting and/or final exposure issues.
A workshop specifically aimed at Real Estate and Architectural Photographers (either group workshop or one-on-one training). I won’t be teaching basics or staging. The focus will be about how to either shoot exclusively with only available light in a HDR post production pipeline or how to integrate HDR along with your flash / continuous lighting frames taken to enhance lighting and add a new touch to your work. I will open pandora’s box and show you all the tips and tricks I use from capture through post production.

HDR Timelapse Video

Posted on August 9, 2010 by admin

Over the weekend I uploaded some HDR Timelapse Video to both my Vimeo and YouTube accounts (links below). It is part HDR Timelapse and part HDR Video. The HDR Timelapse segments are obvious because the tripod is locked off. What I am calling HDR Video is pseudo HDR video in my book. Those pans in the garden and architectural interiors are actually just still frames that are blended in video editing software to create frames between each still frame.

There are many flaws in the architectural segments because the video software guessed at pixel movement between each frame shot and you’ll see wavy lines appear briefly a few times. Also, because I panned the camera by such a large amount between each still frame shot, the software had trouble creating all the in between frames (which also contributes to the large stair step feeling in the pans). I was tempted to not include these shots because they are flawed, but figured I might as well to at least showcase the fact that each still is a tonemapped image from a 9 shot bracket taken with a Nikon D3 (each merged to HDR, then tonemapped of course).

Again, each frame is actually a bracket of images that were merged to HDR and then tonemapped. Many sequences were shot with a Nikon D3 set to auto bracket 9 shots from under exposed to over exposed with 1EV jumps between each of those 9 frames. I also shot a few segments with a Canon T2i set to 3aeb.

(MORE DETAILS OF THE SHOOT BELOW THE VIDEO LINKS)

Vimeo 720p DIRECT LINK HERE (crisper than YouTube version) (embedded below)

HDR Timelapse and HDR Video from Michael James on Vimeo.

YouTube 1080p DIRECT LINK HERE (embedded below)

The D3 segments were shot via HDR Timelapse using the D3′s built in intervalometer. The intervalometer on the D3 allows for shooting brackets in addition to standard single frame timelapse. You just set the camera up initially as if you are going to shoot an automatic exposure bracket like you would any other AEB burst, but then go into the intervalometer setting afterwards and set it up for timelapse mode… presto… HDR Timelapse capture at your fingertips. (The D3 can fire 3, 5, 7 or 9 frames from under exposed to over exposed in AEB mode)

With the Canon T2i I had to “trick” the camera per se by using in camera AEB plus connecting a Promote Control via USB to it to fire it off. However, this was prior to the Promote Control having the new firmware which adds HDR Timelapse functionality. When I shot the sequences with the T2i it was when the Promote Control would only do standard timelapse or HDR bracketing, but not both.

So what I did was set the Canon T2i to 3aeb on the camera itself and then I set the Promote Control to standard timelapse with it shooting one frame off in 5 second intervals. So the T2i was firing off the full 3aeb sequence over 10 seconds per bracket because of the timelapse delay. Basically, the promote control was assuming it was just firing off a timelapse sequence with shots fired every 5 seconds. But the T2i I set in AEB mode instead of manual mode so that the shots fired off each 5 seconds were in fact the AEB sequence the T2i was set for.

Shot 1 would go off (normal exposure), then 5 seconds later shot 2 would go off (the under exposed frame), then 5 seconds later the shot 3 would go off (over exposed frame). Another 5 seconds would pass and start over on the normal exposure, and on and on.

Because of the 5 second delay between each AEB shot, there was time for trees/sky to move slightly, but the sequences I used the T2i on were not hurt badly because of the delay. The T2i HDR Timelapse sequences were: the bedroom shot, the shot from the top of a home showing trees/beach/water in distance and the Vegas Skyline sunset shot through a VERY DIRTY hotel window (no balcony to shoot from). So the delay between frames was not as apparent as it would be shooting other subject matter.

I used this same technique with the Promote Control to do other HDR Timelapse sequences too, but just have not gotten around to processing yet. I even shortened it up to firing off every 3 seconds in some cases, but it eats through memory cards too fast and doesn’t encompass as many changes in lighting / clouds, etc. Now that the Promote Control’s firmware is updated to support HDR Timelapse, I won’t have to use that work around in the future.

Finally, a lightly tonemapped image of the D3 in progress of shooting the HDR Timelapse sunset sequence. (Shot with a Sigma SD14)

CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGE VERSION

HDRI Blog

Michael James

Tag Archives: tonemapping

Camera + Lens + Tripod

Canon 60D musings and AEB discussion

Toning vs Tonemapping

HDR Express quick take

Last Call for HDR Training

Unified Color HDR Express

HDR Training for Architectural Photography

HDR and Hard Drives

Now contributing on HDRLabs.com

HDR Timelapse Video