Trial Island with Erratic

This view of Trial Island is from Harling Point which has several glacial erratics along its southern shoreline. This was shot with my old SMC Takumar 200mm lens, an under-used part of my kit.

I took this several weeks ago and nearly deleted it because it was ruined in colour by one of those mistakes I make sometimes to not check the white balance settings. Since it was saved as a jpeg, there was no easy way to get it back to a natural colour, though I did try as part of my learning curve for Lightroom and maybe there is more I can do on that front, but black and white beckoned and so I took the ‘easy’ way out of that problem.

This is a tone-mapped HDR image from three brackets. I shot the brackets manually trying for the best exposure, not with an idea of using HDR techniques but that method did prove the best way to rescue something from the wrong white balance. I processed a few versions trying to balance the higher contrast in the foreground without blowing out the highlights, especially in the triangle of water on the left. I did not quite get the result I was seeking, but by about the 6th try, I decided this was close enough for now. Maybe in a few weeks I will be better at this and find a way of getting to where I would like to be. I also tried to get something as satisfactory with more regular processing in Lightroom but could not even get close to this.

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Canon EOS 5Dmkii, SMC Takumar 200mm/f4.0 lens, ISO100, aperture not recorded, 3 brackets (1/60, 1/100, 1/160th).

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17 thoughts on “Trial Island with Erratic”

  2. Pingback: Bedrock Drift « burnt embers

    • Thank you! It does tell me that I need to use a long lens more often, familiar things come out quite differently. I am nearly over my infatuation with the 24mm lens (that has been a long one) – I guess i have been learning how to use it and now it seems normal to have it, and I know better when to reach for it. I don’t have that same comfort with the 200mm, and besides which I usually leave it home.

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  6. I’ve never used LR, but you can overlay a copy of image in a new layer in Photoshop and then change the “Mode” of that additional layer to “Screen” and you might be able to lighten the areas you want to. Try the other modes, too, to see what they do. Adjust the percentage to see how it affects areas. This is the simplified approach. If you add layer masks to that duplicate layer, you gain control, but that’s too complicated to explain here.

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    • Hi Doug. Thanks for the pointers. Sadly, I had to get rid of Photoshop – turned out my son had loaded a not-legal copy (I obviously was not paying sufficient attention), and a virus with it. So, just when I was getting ready to learn photoshop, it was no longer available (which btw is the main reason I did not follow up on your offer to help with it).

      Lightroom is more affordable, but limited. At least it is a stepping stone to other Adobe products so once I am ready for Photoshop, what I have done in LR will carry into photoshop, if I want it to. The methods you describe are ones I am vaguely aware of as I have seen people use them to desaturate their photos – processing them in black and white and then adding a transparent colour layer back. It can look very good, though I am not completely sure of the advantages of that work flow – maybe something to do with getting the blacks that Andy mentions below.

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  7. That’s a lovely piece of contrasty B&W. Ken’s right – RAW images provide so much more flexibility. I’ve (so far) never shot brackets and combined them to produce an HDR image. Every shot on my blog is from a single RAW image. But I would admit that having start off with B&W film stock for many years, home printing exhibition sized prints, I developed a liking for a bit of strong black even in a colour print.

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    • Hi Andy. Thanks for your comments. I was a very poor printer from film and longed for a strong black in many of my images, but never seemed to get there. I think I might have had light leaks or something. And I did not know what I was doing.

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  8. I’m glad you were able to rescue this image. it’s really very nice. However, Your camera and Lightroom can give you more flexibility with a RAW file and it’s very easy. You may even be able to shoot the one exposure an not rely on HDR to bring in highlight and shadow detail because there is so much info stored in the RAW files. You might want to shoot the RAW and jpg at the same time (I think you have that option) until you get comfortable with the RAW format.

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    • Hi Ken, since I got LR I have been shooting RAW files – as you say there is so much more information in them which I am only now discovering. This image predates my transition. I also sometimes do shoot both RAW and jpeg – usually when I am doing something that also requires a smaller jpeg. For instance, the 3D modelling I have been trying to do (what a frustration that has been) requires files around 5meg in size, so I am getting the camera to produce images that size as well as RAW to speed up post processing. Also, for that project I am posting the files to a secure website for the other team members to see, but again not full sized images. I also anticipate that I will sometimes need to shoot jpeg if I think I might use up all my memory on a trip, but the more I use the RAW, the more I realise that I need more memory cards for those kind of situations. It’s too bad that the larger compact flash cards are so expensive per gig compared to some of the more commonly used sizes.

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