Pink Fluffy Morning

[Glennie Passier]

Well, this is the beginning of the images that I found myself a bit lost. I liked the pink clouds to the west of the actual sunrise. The horizon is a bit lumpy because of the sand hill in the middle. The body of water is a little, mostly fresh water lagoon, except when the tide comes over like it has done here.

In ACR - Shadows opened up.
In PSCS6 - HSL Layer on the trees in the corner. NR.

Canon 5D2
Canon 24-70mm @ 24mm
f/11
1/20 sec
ISO 2000
Tripod

C&C Always welcomed and appreciated!

[Diane Miller]

I love this!! Wonderful scene, lovely composition, gorgeous colors and soft tonalities!

I think the horizon may need some CCW rotation, looking at the area to the right of the darker spit of land. You would expect that darker area to be at a slight angle as it is angling away from you.

Can't wait to see more!!

[Michael Thompson]

Very nice colors, and like the reflection.

[Adhika Lie]

Yep! Beautiful photo, Glennie! Agreed about the rotation. I think there is a very slight barrel distortion on this one, too, but I might be wrong.

Also, when you are shooting this kind of scene with tripod especially, you don't need ISO 2000, Glennie. Shoot with the base ISO (I think 100?) and then let the shutter speed fall where they need to be, unless you are trying to freeze motion. But I don't think you were trying to do that here.

[Glennie Passier]

Thank you Diane, Mike and Adhika.

Adhika, I can only think I had the ISO up that high was because of the darkness of the light..? It was taken at 6.21 AM. That's a little before the sun rise. Does that make sense? I checked the other images I had that morning and all the ISO's are around 1000 to 2000.

I have seen so many of your beautifully thought out images, so I really appreciate your suggestions.

[Adhika Lie]

Glennie, yeah I shot in those situations a lot. ISO 100, 1 or 2 sec exposure. It doesn't matter. I will only crank up ISO to 1600 or 3200 when I am shooting stars to keep the shutter speed fast enough so I won't see the star trails. Even then, it will still be in the 15-20 secs area. Landscape processing manipulates tonalities a lot and it is good to start with a very very clean image. You shot this in a very good condition where you don't really have a huge dynamic range, but that is not always the case.

[Andrew Harrell]

Glennie: The ISO setup for landscapes threw me for a loop to the first time I had someone help me with a landscape photo. It seems counter-intuitive to set the ISO level so low, but what Adhika said is correct. As long as you have no movement issues to contend with (say, people moving in background, water/waves moving, treetops moving with wind, etc.) then everything will turn out great.

Welcome back!! Lovely photo. Gives me a feeling of great reach. I think this might have been a situation to play around with height. If you dropped the height, I think you lose a bit of the white sand (mid-pic) beach and get the sky/water-reflections closer together, which might have made for another interesting shot. But heck, I can barely remember to change my SS or ISO, so I can only say these things after-the-fact.

Hope you have more to share.


AP

[Adhika Lie]

Glennie: The ISO setup for landscapes threw me for a loop to the first time I had someone help me with a landscape photo. It seems counter-intuitive to set the ISO level so low, but what Adhika said is correct. As long as you have no movement issues to contend with (say, people moving in background, water/waves moving, treetops moving with wind, etc.) then everything will turn out great.


And the high ISO for bird photography drove me crazy when I started shooting birds almost a year ago. It's fun to learn all this stuff! :D

[Glennie Passier]

Thank you Adhika and Andrew. I can see this is going to do my head in. Here's the year's most stupid question...Are we still ETTR?

[Adhika Lie]

LOL. No, that's not the most stupid question. Yes, you still ETTR, blown out highlights are just as bad; but pulling out shadows will not reveal as much noise when you shoot at base ISO. In other words, it is so much more forgiving when you shoot at low ISO.

[Diane Miller]

This must have been very low light, to have ISO 2000 and 1/20 sec. But if that gives you a little overexposure that's fine, as long as you don't blow highlights beyond recovery. ETTR is to let you reduce the exposure in post to make noise less. So it could be appropriate in any exposure, if practical -- that is if it doesn't give a SS too slow to keep steady, or need too high an ISO, etc. But the lower the ISO the less you are likely to need it.

The best answer for a still subject is to bracket exposure a little and decide later.

[Glennie Passier]

Thank you Diane. I always think about bracketing afterwards. And yes, it was very low light. In some of my recent images I have pushed the ISO to 2000 for BIF. I think, from looking at them now, the camera I have just isn't great at that ISO. I am thinking of upgrading to a 5D3...for my birthday. I don't know if it will make me a better photographer! LOL

[Adhika Lie]

From the engineering perspective, this is roughly what's going on:

ISO does not change the amount of light that falls on your sensor. ISO is just post-sensor gain applied to the image to make it brighter. It doesn't change the amount of signal (i.e. light) to noise (in the sensor) ratio in the data. So, amplifying that signal will amplify the noise by the same amount. Because noise characteristics of the sensor can be considered equal for most practical purpose (sensor dependent - that's why newer generation cameras have lower noise), the only way to make your image brighter without make it significantly polluted by noise is by making the amount of data in the sensor as maximum as possible. In other words, you need to open up that aperture (lower f stop) or use slower shutter speed.

ETTR is essentially the same concept; you are trying to maximize the signal to noise ratio in the raw data.

[Diane Miller]

I think about ETTR this way: The number of photons captured in each photosite during an exposure is converted to an electronic signal. (That's when it becomes digital -- the actual sensor is analog.) The capture is linear but our eyes don't work that way and neither can an image as it needs to reflect how we see the tonal range. A linear conversion will result in a very dark image. So the signal is converted with a curve that makes the darks relatively brighter. That makes the number of tonal values toward the right of the histogram greater and they decrease to the left. So there is much more signal relative to noise in the brighter tones. So if you lift the darker tones, the noise that has been hidden will show.

If we can overexpose enough to get a little more signal into the darks, we can have a better signal to noise ratio in the darks, and thus have more leeway to bring them up in post. In the typical scene, in order to not blow out highlights, we may only be able to overexpose by a stop or two, relative to what the camera meter reads as an average or good value for the scene. (A more sophisticated meter could calculate that exposure for us.) It's somewhat a black art to decide how much overexposure can be salvaged in post. So with a landscape, bracketing 1-3 stops above the meter's reading can be a good idea, then see which one works best in post -- or even do an HDR where you combine different exposures in different parts of the scene with layer masks or HDR software.

BTW, the new HDR feature in LR 6 and CC takes your bracketed set and creates an amazing natural-looking result that is still a raw file. It is amazing. I don't know if it is ACR for the recent versions of PS.
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/hdr-photo-merge.html


Glennie - hold off on the new 5D Mk 4 to see what the upcoming model will offer. Probably announced by the end of summer.
http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-5d-mark-iv-specification-list-cr1/
http://www.canonrumors.com/canon-eos-5d-mark-iv-being-tested-by-photographers/

It may be more about 4K video than lower noise compared to the 5D3, but will probably be a newer sensor with about half the noise improvement that will be touted. Claims about the ISO range being much higher are always meaningless with any camera, as the noise up there is always intolerable.

[Jim Keener]

Glennie, you must have traveled to Big Sky Country. How grand. Gorgeous shot. What would you think of pulling up the blues in the upper right corner?

[Glennie Passier]

Adhika and Diane - I admire your steel trap brains. Mine is rusty. I don't often (well, never really) think of how these things work. Maybe I should try and grasp it more firmly. Will it make me shoot better? LOL! Diane, thank you for the info on the 5D4.

Jim, not really big sky country, but bigger than what I have at home. Good idea about the blues in the corner! Thank you.