D70 - Histogram - what am I looking at?

Ken Tough wrote:

...It doesn't seem nice to lose contrast range just to
keep a few highlights in though. I suppose that's where your own
custom non-linear contrast map could come in useful (one I left off
my list of potential fixes). Who knows, I might get around to that
one day, but as yet I'm not even printing much.

Are you talking about loading a custom curve into the camera? That might
be helpful if you didn't want to shoot RAW. AFAIK it's only possible to
load one curve though it would be nice to have a low contrast curve for
bright sky situations, etc.

I've come to the conclusion that I really need to bracket for those
bright sky shots & merge the two. I had really bad results shooting the
other day trying to underexpose to save highlights my shots were
terribly underexposed, even with RAW I could not recover them
acceptably. For the amount of work involved to do all that it might well
be wise to load a custom curve instead.

paul wrote:

Ken Tough wrote:
...It doesn't seem nice to lose contrast range just to
keep a few highlights in though. I suppose that's where your own
custom non-linear contrast map could come in useful (one I left off
my list of potential fixes). Who knows, I might get around to that
one day, but as yet I'm not even printing much.

Are you talking about loading a custom curve into the camera? That might
be helpful if you didn't want to shoot RAW. AFAIK it's only possible to
load one curve though it would be nice to have a low contrast curve for
bright sky situations, etc.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I was thinking of.

I've come to the conclusion that I really need to bracket for those
bright sky shots & merge the two. I had really bad results shooting the
other day trying to underexpose to save highlights my shots were
terribly underexposed, even with RAW I could not recover them
acceptably. For the amount of work involved to do all that it might well
be wise to load a custom curve instead.

The page DonF recommended (http://luminous-landscape.com/) has
mention of the merging for high-contrast situations. I would
love to see the impact of such a curve, since I have been a
bit disappointed at trying to take dramatic sky shots along
with landscape.

--
Ken Tough

Ken Tough wrote:

paul wrote:


Ken Tough wrote:

...It doesn't seem nice to lose contrast range just to
keep a few highlights in though. I suppose that's where your own
custom non-linear contrast map could come in useful (one I left off
my list of potential fixes). Who knows, I might get around to that
one day, but as yet I'm not even printing much.


Are you talking about loading a custom curve into the camera? That might
be helpful if you didn't want to shoot RAW. AFAIK it's only possible to
load one curve though it would be nice to have a low contrast curve for
bright sky situations, etc.


Yeah, exactly. That's what I was thinking of.


I've come to the conclusion that I really need to bracket for those
bright sky shots & merge the two. I had really bad results shooting the
other day trying to underexpose to save highlights my shots were
terribly underexposed, even with RAW I could not recover them
acceptably. For the amount of work involved to do all that it might well
be wise to load a custom curve instead.


The page DonF recommended (http://luminous-landscape.com/) has
mention of the merging for high-contrast situations. I would
love to see the impact of such a curve, since I have been a
bit disappointed at trying to take dramatic sky shots along
with landscape.

Check out Photomatx.

Jan

Jan wrote:
Ken Tough wrote:

paul wrote:


Ken Tough wrote:

...It doesn't seem nice to lose contrast range just to keep a few
highlights in though. I suppose that's where your own
custom non-linear contrast map could come in useful (one I left off
my list of potential fixes). Who knows, I might get around to that
one day, but as yet I'm not even printing much.



Are you talking about loading a custom curve into the camera? That
might be helpful if you didn't want to shoot RAW. AFAIK it's only
possible to load one curve though it would be nice to have a low
contrast curve for bright sky situations, etc.



Yeah, exactly. That's what I was thinking of.


I've come to the conclusion that I really need to bracket for those
bright sky shots & merge the two. I had really bad results shooting
the other day trying to underexpose to save highlights my shots were
terribly underexposed, even with RAW I could not recover them
acceptably. For the amount of work involved to do all that it might
well be wise to load a custom curve instead.



The page DonF recommended (http://luminous-landscape.com/) has
mention of the merging for high-contrast situations. I would
love to see the impact of such a curve, since I have been a
bit disappointed at trying to take dramatic sky shots along
with landscape.

Check out Photomatx.


Hmmm... http://www.hdrsoft.com/

" Saving time in post-processing
Photomatix Pro is designed for productivity -- automatic blending,
unlimited stacking, easy comparison of results and batch processing save
hours of masking and layers work in image editing softwares."