HDR and large format?

[jp]

While HDR is certainly a cool creative technology, and I love digital photography and computers, I don't bother with it. For me, there's no glory in technical achievement (especially if I have to pay for it), as that's a moving target that get trumped regularly. That's why I am happy to use a 60 year old camera as well as 1 year old camera. I just want photos of things or places that meet my needs and quality/artistic objectives.

I shoot mostly local scenes, and if I get a good composition but difficult lighting, I come back later. In my films days, my color photography was mostly slides, and my first dslr had a fairly limited dynamic range, much like slides. I would advocate a simple solution whenever possible. For me, this might mean revisiting the location under a different lighting condition. For example snowy woods looked best on cloudy days usually with the digital camera, or late/early sunny days rather than mid day. However with B&W film, there were more conditions I could photography the snowy woods and get the right texture and shadows. At the beach, we have large tides, and often I time my adventuring to correspond with both tide and weather.

For people photos, I sometimes needed to use a reflector when shooting to put enough light into facial shadows so detail wouldn't be lost to the recording medium. I don't see why something like this couldn't be employed any any close quarters shooting.

[Kirk Gittings]

Correct and the higher the ISO the more NR that gets applied behind the scenes. So if you have a 1600 ISO file it will get more than a 100 ISO file. This NR is set up to deal with digital noise which looks very different than film grain. One of the reasons that the Photoshop Actions/Plugins that add noise to an image to simutale grain look so bad.

Digital Noise combined with grain is very hard for software to remove and results in a loss of sharpness in the final image. Will you get a lot of grain and noise in the final image? Not really, but if the OP is bothered by film grain using 8x10 negative film than any added noise of grain would be too much.

No, you are missing the point, all my files are shot at ISO 200. It has nothing to do with high ISO. I don't bracket with ISO ever. The low noise of exposure blended files is because of the healthy exposure for the shadows. The bracketed exposure for the shadows has virtually no noise in the shadows because the shadows are placed high like on Zone V, and that is the file that the HDR program uses for the shadows. Whatever noise you have in the boosted shadow exposure is what you will get in the file of the blended file.

Try it. It is obvious.
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[George Stewart]

I have shot down in the swamps of Florida, several times. My typical equipment is an 8x10 (B&W) and a DSLR. My 8x10s are scanned on an IQSmart2, as well.

I have found that my results are better with the DSLR, bracketed and stitched, than with a single 8x10 B&W image. I haven't tried HDR with LF due to the cost, and logistics when traveling (I do not want to burn film on fewer images). You should probably try one or two images and see for yourself. Also, you may wish to try some HDR-stitched images and compare.

[Alan Davenport]

I've done LF HDR once, when I wanted a shot of a church interior with a 9 stop range and I had a bag full of Ektachrome. It works but it's awfully fussy.

[John Brady]

Hi Alan, that looks like a pretty effective job to me!
George, I am referring to shooting color transparencies in the swamp, I find it to be way more difficult (at least for me) than shooting black and white, which I do also.
I will probably skip this project with LF and give color negative pro 160s a try again.

On the other hand, I just received a new cannon 5d mark II and the new Cannon 17mm tilt shift lens. That should be fun to experiment with HDR on. I think a 17mm with 12mm of shift/rise and fall should be good fun.

jb
www.gladesgallery.com

[George Stewart]

John, if you are not already familiar with Really Right Stuff products, their pano-mount might be the ticket.

http://reallyrightstuff.com/pano/07.html

Also, this, or a similar product, might be useful when doing two-shot panoramas with your new TS lens. Start with the lens shifted all the way left, then shift right and adjust the body so that the nodal point is where it was for the first image.

http://reallyrightstuff.com/macro/02.html

[Kirk Gittings]

Also, this, or a similar product, might be useful when doing two-shot panoramas with your new TS lens. Start with the lens shifted all the way left, then shift right and adjust the body so that the nodal point is where it was for the first image.

Unless something has changed that I don't know about on the Canon 17 TS, finding the nodal point is not necessary when doing a two shot shift panorama with all previous TS lenses as the nodal point doesn't shift hence the body doesn't need to move. I own Canon 24, 45, 90 TS and a Olympus 35 PC. Just do the shifts. Making sure to lock down your white balance. I do, on average 6 such panoramas on every commercial shoot (18 or such stitches a week), and they align perfectly and stitch effortlessly with just PS.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

the nodal point is not necessary when doing a two shot shift panorama

Of course, dear Moderator, not necessary, you are right, for the simple reason : it is the entrance pupil that matters, the nodal points are totally irrelevant to panoramic stitching ;-);-)

[GPS]

I've done LF HDR once, when I wanted a shot of a church interior with a 9 stop range and I had a bag full of Ektachrome. It works but it's awfully fussy.

Sorry Alan, nothing against a personal taste but this picture looks to me like a failure. The amount of the light in it is surreal. Every churchgoer knows that church ceilings do not have this light on them. It's like you wanted to take a photograph of the vaults surface. But in the same time it flattens the church interior terribly - shadows that make vaults so intriguing in the architecture were wanted by architects - they create volume filled with inner visual content. To me, your picture seems artificial and devoid of the architectural intention. The graphical and spiritual center of the picture (the altar) is empty. It almost seems as if the main purpose of the picture were making the lighting uniform. Sorry, just sincere.
What is more, the lamps do not give off any light - quite the opposite, they themselves seem to be illuminated by some light source that itself is omni directional and illogical. Sorry again.

[Kirk Gittings]

the nodal point is not necessary when doing a two shot shift panorama

Of course, dear Moderator, not necessary, you are right, for the simple reason : it is the entrance pupil that matters, the nodal points are totally irrelevant to panoramic stitching ;-);-)

Of course, dear Moderator? Cute.

Understood. It is popularly but incorrectly referred to as the nodal point. Regardless, shift stitching requires no adjustment of the camera position for near perfect alignment.