Shooting Tree Trunk Boles - advice & discussion, please

[barrydoig]

This type of subject works very well in HDR, as it can bring out the texture. Also, try it in Black & White, or even B & W HDR.
A little cleaning up of straggly sticks etc otherwise leave it as it is.
Barry

[xpatUSA]

This type of subject works very well in HDR, as it can bring out the texture. Also, try it in Black & White, or even B & W HDR.
A little cleaning up of straggly sticks etc otherwise leave it as it is.
Barry

Hi Barry,

I've never tried HDR, not even sure how it's done but, if layers are involved, I'm not using anything that can do that - being Adobe-free as we speak. But you're right about DR being necessary to bring out the texture. Too late on the clearance I already did that, but did leave twigs and leaves and put a feather there for the sake of nature.

All,

Tried some more shots yesterday, making many classic mistakes:



Top two; too much flare detracts from subject. Top right shot without flash and attempted shadow recovery in RawTherapee made the flare worse. Bottom left with Panasonic GH1 (not noted for it's DR) serious damage to the Palmetto leaf that's against the sky and pretty bad blue CA on the trunk there. Bottom right with Sigma SD14 (better DR) but slight hand shake not visible in the image. Also not too visible is some funny-looking bokeh (circles, not blobs) up in the trees.

I'm beginning to agree more with all who have suggested artificial lighting or night shots to bring out the texture and make the trunk more obviously the subject of the shot. As to monochrome, i.e. B&W, I'm not a great fan of it but I do have the option on the Sigma (hot filter is easily removable) of either full-spectrum or 700nm IR - in which case I have pair of 500W heat lamps for illumination! And I also have a pair of wireless-controlled EF-500 flash guns (which would not be fun setting up) either as supplemental lighting or for a full night shot.

The possibilities boggle my mind

[tao2]

Hi Ted,

Dunno what happened there - here's a re-post...

try taking 3 readings where the arrows are pointing (using spot). Calculate the mean shutter speed and (try) tae use the same aperture, then switch tae Matrix/Wide (or equiv) setting, focusing on the tree @ the middle arrow



Both these shots were taken using this method but only using the camera metering as it's a rangefinder without spot/local/Matrix settings as on my DSLR.

The first with a wee bit (5%) saturation, the second is SOOC...

[xpatUSA]

Too cold last night to try artificial lighting shots, so I popped the hot mirror/dust cover out of the SD14 and put a Marumi 700nm IR filter on the lens. Then off to the tree this mid-morning; hand-held it near ground level and took about 8 Infra-red shots to "bracket" the composition.



The IR appears to have muted the background brightness and clutter and turned the greenery to a light brown. Thus the trunk is more prominent visually, I reckon.

Being me, I ignore the standard procedure for IR development. The Sigma SD14 IR pictures are rendered very well by a utility called RawDigger and this one was exported as an RGB tif and no color adjustments have been made. No channel-swapping, nada. Then I had at it in good old FastStone Viewer (shock, horror). In curves, I put a big s-shape to both reduce contrast in the highlights and increase contrast radically in the mids. Then onward to two-stage sharpening a) with radius 1.7px for detail contrast and b) radius 0.3px for sharpness. As if that wasn't enough, down-sized Lanczos 'sharper' for posting here.

For those who wondered about black and white, I took the red channel export from RawDigger which comes out monochrome:



comments still welcome . .

[IzzieK]

Sorry...ignoramus here...So IR is a filter....?? I thought you have to have a special camera for IR Photography. Nice effect here...

[xpatUSA]

Sorry...ignoramus here...So IR is a filter....?? I thought you have to have a special camera for IR Photography. Nice effect here...

The first Sigma SD9 DSLR had the so-called "hot-mirror" epoxied to the sensor. Silicon photo-diodes are sensitive up to 1150nm light wavelength which is too much for ordinary photography, so the hot mirror blocks infra-red light (IR) from getting to the sensor photo-diodes. All later Sigma DSLRs have an easily removable combination hot mirror/dust cover just behind the lens, maybe because they implemented micro-lenses on the sensor to improve the sensitivity. On the SD14, it can be removed with a finger-nail in seconds! At that point, the camera becomes a "full spectrum" camera, sensitive from about 360nm (near UV) up to about 1100nm (near IR).

Most cameras, other than the Sigmas, have to be opened up and the hot mirror surgically and permanently removed from the sensor - which is irreversible and often fails to please . . .

The so-called IR lens filters actually block the the visible wavelengths from the lens, so that only IR wavelengths are captured by the sensor. They range from about 680nm cut-off up to 950nm or more. My favorite is the Marumi 700nm, the most popular appears to be the Hoya 720nm. I also have a 680nm, two 720nm and a 950nm but the camera won't auto-focus through it.

For anyone wanting to try IR, I would heartily recommend an early Sigma DSLR SD10/SD14/SD15 and a cheap zoom, rather that the hassle of getting an existing camera modified or expense of buying a special camera.

[xpatUSA]

Still at it, trying various ways to shoot the tree and make it stand out from the cluttered background.



This is a shot taken at dusk. I placed a Sigma EF-500 (GN 50m) unit each side of the tree to create shadows in the texture. I triggered them with the on-camera flash (GN 11m). It is an IR shot, taken with a Marumi 700nm IR pass filter on the lens. The shot was converted with RawDigger and tarted up a bit in RawTherapee.

Perhaps too much flash (set to max, naturally, what other setting is there?) Maybe too much flash from the camera unit, might be better to block it's light from the tree and bring the side flashes forward a tad . .

But the tree sure stands out now, dunnit? . .

[IzzieK]

This looks good, Ted...almost like IR...

[xpatUSA]

This looks good, Ted...almost like IR...

Thank you, Izzie. Yes, it's taken with the hot mirror (which blocks IR) removed from the camera and a IR passing filter which acutally blocks visible light on the lens.

[IzzieK]

Your activity has become very interesting...keep it up, mate!