Sunrise before the storm

[shane shacaluga]

Hi all. I rarely do lanscape shots but decided I might as well use my D800e for what it has been designed for

Here is a sunrise yesterday morning during my usual dog walk in the hills.

D800e
50mm f1.8
f9
1/640
ISO 100

Handheld. I blended two exposures of the same shot with a luminosity later at 40%. Then used a new sharpening technique i learned recently to avoid bringing out any noise in the shadows althought at ISO 100 its noiseless really

Full frame image reduced for web

Hope you like it. The sunrise was spectacular but it hasnt stopped raining since then

[Morkel Erasmus]

A lovely scene Shane, simplistic and tranquil. Processing well handled.
Looks like a painting!

[shane shacaluga]

Thanks Morkel ;)

[Diane Miller]

Beautiful, with great tonal structure. I love the balance, with the heavy clouds below center and the bright sun and reflection below them. There is a great deal of interest in the sky, with the lighter clouds slowly fading out toward the top, which balances the lower portion very well.

The word noise always gets my attention -- is your new sharpening method proprietary?

[shane shacaluga]

Thanks for the comments

Diane I saw this webinar from Topaz that showed this method using High Pass filter.

You basically run a high pass filter on the layer you want to sharpen and adjust the radius to enhance the details slightly. For landscapes you can be a bit braver with the radius than on small birds
Then run a noise reduction on the grey high pass layer to remove all noise so you can only see the outlines from the high pass filter.
Then smart sharpen this layer as you would sharpen any layer for web (they use smart sharpen in the webinar but will try with unsharp mask too)
Finally blend with linear light.
You can then adjust opacity to suit

I am still playing about with this method but i get no extra noise and a sharper image

[Diane Miller]

I've used the high pass thing -- akin to ACR/LR's Clarity. Never thought about NR and sharpening on the layer -- clever! I'll give it a try. Thanks!!

[Don Lacy]

Very nice image the more I look at it the more it grows on me. Have you tried cropping from the top maybe even to a square crop to balance the image just a bit more since so much of the wieght of the image is in the lower third of the frame.

[shane shacaluga]

HI Don,

decided to have another go cropping from the top and a sliver from the left

Let me know your thoughts on this repost of the same original image

[Diane Miller]

For me, I think the original is a little more dramatic, with the weight of the dark clouds lower in the frame, but that's a just matter of taste. Both are wonderful! Looking at it again, I wonder if the midtones might be brought up a little?