The day before heavy clouds rolled in but I went out early morning anyway hoping that there would be enough of a cloud break to capture a sunrise photo. There wasn’t. I was able to captured this photo instead. This is a combination of HDR and Panorama. I took a series of five photos in three panoramic positions. I combined the photos in a panorama after I processed and merged them to HDR using ACR. I cropped most of the right side of the panorama photo because it didn’t add enough to the photo to justify the extra width.
Taken in the Sandhills area of Nebraska.
Specific Feedback Requested
I’m looking for an overall critique of the photo. How can I make it better?
I’m also looking for pointers to how I captured this photo. Did I use the correct technique? Is there a better technique?
I shot these photos manually. That is to say that I used the histogram and exposed for the brightest part for the first frame. The I slowed the shutter speed by one stop for each subsequent frame until I was satisfied that the darkest parts of the photo were well exposed. If you look at my technical details (below), you will see my shutter speeds.
Note: My reason for exposing manually is due to the experience I gained with a similar shot the year before. I used my camera’s built in HDR Mode. It was a total bust.
Technical Details
Camera: Canon 5D IV | Lens: EF 17-40 | Focal Length 40mm | f22 | ISO 100 | Shutter Speed Varies
Group 1: 1/320; 1/160 ; 1/80 ; 1/40; 1/20
Group 2: 1/250; 1/125; 1/60; 1/30; 1/15
Group 3: 1/200: 1/100: 1/50: 1/25: 1/13
Hey David,
For a photo like this you might not really need to use the HDR blending and perhaps just use the set of images where the highlights are not blown out instead… and lift the shadows later. There’s significant haloing on the horizon here caused by shadow/highlight manipulation. Capturing this in manual is the way to go, so good job there. I would not have used f/22 as it is probably not needed - perhaps f/13 or f/16 is adequate. Otherwise you lose sharpness and introduce diffraction.
Good thoughts by @Matt_Payne. I use LR and don’t know if you can do this is ACR but probably so. In LR I would take the set at the exposure he suggested (although the brightest part of the sun may be blown out in all exposures) and let it stitch the pano. No need to do any adjustments first as it returns a DNG which is a raw file just like the originals. Then you can experiment with pulling up the shadows and then opening in PS to do noise reduction. Worth a quick comparison.
Before we had the powers of the Shadows and Highlights sliders in a raw file, an HDR blend like you did was much more useful. And it certainly still has its place, when you need to really stretch tonalities in the darks. But often you have enough information in the raw files. Today’s noise reduction software can compensate for a lot of the noise when you lighten the dark areas.
I see some strangeness in the ground detail – possibly from slight movement of the tripod or even inadvertent focus changes between exposures? Tripods are never as steady as we want to think.
Thank you for your help! I created a pano with three images as you suggested and the result is much better. There was some noise, but I was able to reduce it using Topaz. The softness to the right and in the background is significantly reduced.
Thanks for your help!
Great choice going with the panoramic. Not sure if this was your intention, but this sure has a dark and almost gloomy presence. Made me think of some place like Scottland or Ireland where the weather might be like this most of the time - and the sun low in the sky.
I think the subtle layering here is making this work too; the highlighted grasses up front, then the rolling, expanding hills and undulations and then finall the sun breaking through the foggy/clouds creates a bit of depth, which is also a good thing.
Hard to say about processing. Sometimes I’ll do some bacic adjustments, presets in ACR before merging - OR go ahead and merge to panorama, then go thru the processing. Guess it just depends on all the images. I think the approach of shooting multiples of the same scene and processed, and doing for each series as you mention, then merging to pano afterwords works just as well. This one comes out a little dark, but then that is what is setting the mood too; so it all boils down to personal prefence on what you want to say/present with your image.
And lastly, if you’re thinking about printing, I know I would want the landscape brighter so the viewer can enjoy and experience the landscape. But for the web, this works as presented too.
I can see why you wanted to take this image David. I really like the scene in general. The valley or rift that goes down through the middle and splits the shaggy foreground on the left from the rolling and mounded area on the right. You have nice subtle light skimming the tops of each of the mounds and also the foreground grasses. You have a very moody sky which I like. @Matt_Payne already mentioned that you have significant hallowing along the tops of the far hills and he discusses why.
Was this shot on a tripod or were these hand held? I only say this because it appears that the image is a little bit soft but that could also be from shooting at F/22.
I also agree with what @Matt_Payne and @Diane_Miller say about pulling up the blacks later after trying to mostly expose for the highlights because unless the blacks are so badly clipped, they can usually be pulled up in post with shadow recovery and the software to reduce noise is so good these days that you can go a long way pulling those blacks where you want them.
Thank you for your thoughts. It was a dark and gloomy morning. I went out hoping that there would be enough break in the clouds for a sunrise photo. As you can see, it was well after sunrise before the sun was able to cast light on the ground. I almost packed up, but I’m glad I stuck it out.
I understand what you’re saying about the photo printing dark. I had a test print made and it came out darker that my monitor. I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with this. I have calibrated my monitor down to 70 lumens. That appears to be as low as I can go with the monitor I have. I’d be interested in your input to a solution.
Thank you for your thoughts. The softness and hallowing appears to be in the HDR processing. I processed this as a panorama using one set of exposures and the softness and hallowing have been removed.
I am glad I have found NPN. I’m at a point where I need constructive criticism to grow my photography skills. I have received valuable feedback on everything that I have posted.
