My 1000th Post ..... Pirates of the Carribean

In honor of my 1000th post, I thought I would throw up what I consider the premier photo I've ever taken on a dark ride. The first picture is what I got out of the camera with zero post processing. The second shot is my attempt do do an HDR treatment on it with the use of 9 total pictures bracketed at 1/3 stops

The unprocessed photo:


The HDR:


The HDR has a lot of noise in it for the blacks. I wish I knew more about Noise Reduction in the Post Production environment because it could very well look really nice

 

oooooh nice...was the boat stopped?

 

NO! That's what makes it so amazing to me. This was our second ride on the attraction during this trip and I knew it was coming. So I got lucky and got a focus lock on one of the lightening flashes before we got there. Then I switched my finger to the "AF-ON" botton on the back of the camera (next to the "AE-L/AF-L" button to hold the lock. I have a problem if I hold the focus with the shutter release I invariably get a muscle spasm and take the picture too soon. So I love this button on the D300.

Then when the boat was perfectly lined up I took a shot and somehow got it timed just right.

To add to the amazement on my part, I was using my 18-200VR lens

 

I should clarify that I didn't take 9 frames while on the ride. I just duplicated my file 9 times so that Photomatix could do the bracketing for me with the NEF files

 

Very nice grab! I have tried so far about a half-dozen times, and have not yet been able to catch one of the lightning strikes...so I've always got either way too long of a shutter speed, or if set manually, way too dark to see anything.

I like the original here better than the HDR attempt, to be honest...the darks add to the mystery and night-like setting that are appropriate to the scene.

Using the technique you did of duplicating the same shot 9 times, you're going to get some serious issues with noise, color loss, and more - the original shot had such dark shadows that any attempts to boost and lighten them will result in fairly nasty noise. But I think with a little masking work, some contrast masking, some layer screening, and some touch ups, you might get even better results than trying HDR. I may play with it when I get home just to see how it comes out (though working with the small version you posted will never be as successful as the larger one!).

 

Ray, your comment about the AF-ON button reminds me of a pseudo-facepalm moment I had last night...thinking about my upcoming trip, and switching my dark ride shooting menu to go to AF-ON for AF and shutter release for just shutter release/no focus may allow me to reduce the hunting that can occur...the last time I was in the park I was using a manual focus only Zeiss, so it didn't matter.

 

Justin,

I agree with you 100%

Unfortunately, those are skills I just don't possess. I had noticed when I was playing around with Photomatix that if I didn't mess with any of the default settings, it seemed to do a really good job of salvaging pictures that were exposed too dark or too bright.

In the original, the skeleton is a bit too washed out from the lightening flash. So I was trying to salvage some of the detail. The blacks are destroyed though because of it. I may need to force myself to play around with Nikon's CaptureNX2 software because the symposium (aka sales pitch) I took a few months back made it sound like they made it easier to do those kind of things without having to know about layers, masking, etc

 

The dedicated RAW converters are nice because of that, although Bibble 5 is adding layers. And CaptureNX has those control points..

In A2: I'd just move my Recovery slider to 1.5, then adjust the highlight slider to the right until I got enough detail recovered, then move the shadow sliders to brighten the shadows until I got the look I wanted...

 

I need to find out from Tim how I can get him to host the original NEF file. I'd love to see what some of you more skilled post processors can do with this. Nancy really would like to see this one hanging on a wall if it can be made to do so.

BTW, that is ISO 3200....

 

That's awesome Ray!
and congrats on your 1000th post!

if you want to email the original to me in a zip folder, I can put it up at my site for download for everyone quite easily. just make sure you stick it in a zipped folder or software seems to want to change the nef to something else.

 

Craig,

I sent the NEF to you in a zip file

 

ray, send it to me via email and i will post it for you. congrats!
btw, i fixed the broken links for the pics on your flickr page.

 

Craig...if you can, put up a copy of that original in raw, tiff, or jpg - I don't know if my software can open nef.

Thanks!

 

I wanted to try a quick 'n'dirty on the one you posted above...hard to get the most out of it though. I ran a contrast mask layer at 40%, then layered and blended in screen mode at 40%, selectively darkened a few of the shadows back down where the lightning had illuminated a bit too much of the wall behind, and boosted the red saturation about 5%. Lost too much detail in saving a small jpg from a small jpg! Not great...but fun anyway!

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here is Ray's original Nef:

http://cdbendele.com/dsc_3125.zip

 

I'm curious to see if anyone used to messing with NEFs will take it on