The Edit has begun

[rpcrowe]

Donald,

My "oldie-but goodie" Sekonic meter (L-718) is not anyway nearly as sophisticated as the L-758 you use. I supposed, that I could mentally do the compensation using my L-718 that your L-758 does automatically.

I use the L-718 primarily for flash exposure when using studio lighting and when I am shooting with my fish-eye lens which is not connected to the camera metering system.

I am not sure if bracketing would not do approximately the same thing as your meter does automatically. The downside of bracketing is the 3x the number of images which can take a lot of memory. However, I have a large amount of CF memory and my normal practice (on trips) is to download my images each evening. Which allows me to travel with a bit less memory than I would need if I waited until the end of my trip to download my images.

However, I am going to try and figure out if I could do approximately the same thing with my L-718 as you have done with your L-758. OTOH: I have not had exposure problems and "why fix something if it ain't broke"

[ScoutR]

This is stunning Donald. The soft muted colours are so beautiful and dreamy and in sharp contrast with the subject matter which I just love.

Glad to hear you had such a good trip, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your take on this much photographed area of the world.

[ST1]

Glad you've had a wonderful trip Donald. This first offering I shall think of it as a starter of a multi course meal and in colour too! (Thanks for that) is stunning. I shall look forward to seeing the next remove


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[marlunn]

Welcome back Donald, a beautiful image, thank you. I look forward to more of them.

[Hans]

Hello Donald, so nice to hear you have been over to experience that wonderful place so rich with landscaping possibilities.

I would personally love to hear some commentary on your compositional intentions and the thoughts and feeling that have contributed to how you eventually came to compose your photographs as you have. May we have a little insight into to the inner workings of your creative, attentive and deliberate mind? Would be fascinating.

I can't wait to see your black and whites!

FWIW, I would not open the shadows in the lower right foreground as they balance out the highlights that dominate the mid to upper left. In fact they could be darker. My 2c.

[NorthernFocus]

Excellent image, Donald. Good choice to present this one in color. The only interesting feature in that sky is the color. I fear the evening mood would be awfully difficult to convey in monochrome. Looking forward to more

[Daisy Mae]

Stunning work. So very peaceful and superb tones.

[Donald]

I fear the evening mood would be awfully difficult to convey in monochrome. Looking forward to more

Watch this space!! It's on the way ... after the editing is complete.

[LePetomane]

Donald, thanks for the sneak preview.

[William W]

. . . I've also never been so grateful for all the time spent when I first got them just getting to know them and spending the time I did learning to operate them in the dark, so that I don't have to remove my eye from the viewfinder to be able to accurately and quickly change all manner of functions, not just aperture and shutter speed, but focus points, ISO speed, metering mode, etc. etc. When you have the moon suddenly appear and you see a shot that you never envisaged, you want to know that you know your gear well enough to be able to get the shot

Sage.

***

... and I did.

Bravo.

Bill

[emalvick]

That's a beautiful photos... As someone that grew up within a 2-hour drive of Yosemite, I'd say I've never gotten a photo so good in that spot. As someone else mentioned, there is something to be said for haze (it's been a heck of a fire season here in California but the haze creates stunning sunsets).

As to the topic of over-exposure, with regard to what blinks on the screen and what we actually get in our files, I've always been of the opinion that what you see on the screen is not really accurate if you are shooting RAW photos. I have had a series of Pentax dSLR's and the histogram and "blinkies" reflect the JPEG image shown on the camera screen not the RAW file I took.

My solution is to set the contrast setting within the camera (for JPEG captures) to the lowest setting possible. This has no effect on the raw file but does show up when your camera displays the image on the camera screen, which requires the camera to provide some default processing. Setting the contrast low compresses the dynamic range of the image so that if the image ends up showing "blinkies" you have more confidence the image has clipped. But, if your sensor is capturing 12 to 14 bits of information and dynamic range, there is still a chance the histogram is clipped vs. the raw file when viewed in the camera.

All this of course doesn't say much of what the light meters in our cameras are doing. They are not that intelligent and often based on what they think the middle of the image should be. An external light meter still gives you more control.

Rather, I just want to point out that shooting and correcting for "blinkies" or the histogram can be inaccurate. Early on, it certainly led me to shoot way more brackets for HDR processing than I never actually needed (thankfully).

[george013]

That's a beautiful photos... As someone that grew up within a 2-hour drive of Yosemite, I'd say I've never gotten a photo so good in that spot. As someone else mentioned, there is something to be said for haze (it's been a heck of a fire season here in California but the haze creates stunning sunsets).
As to the topic of over-exposure, with regard to what blinks on the screen and what we actually get in our files, I've always been of the opinion that what you see on the screen is not really accurate if you are shooting RAW photos. I have had a series of Pentax dSLR's and the histogram and "blinkies" reflect the JPEG image shown on the camera screen not the RAW file I took.

The raw-converter generates a rgb-raster image that can be viewed on your screen or being saved to disk and opened again to be viewed. In both case the rgb-raster image is the source of the visible image. But in case of the jpeg-file it has been compressed and therefore has most likely less blinkies. Assumed you're using the same converter, the same settings and no treshold.

My solution is to set the contrast setting within the camera (for JPEG captures) to the lowest setting possible. This has no effect on the raw file but does show up when your camera displays the image on the camera screen, which requires the camera to provide some default processing. Setting the contrast low compresses the dynamic range of the image so that if the image ends up showing "blinkies" you have more confidence the image has clipped. But, if your sensor is capturing 12 to 14 bits of information and dynamic range, there is still a chance the histogram is clipped vs. the raw file when viewed in the camera.

That might be a trick that works. But only if you want to edit the file anyway. It won't be advisible if you shoot jpeg.

All this of course doesn't say much of what the light meters in our cameras are doing. They are not that intelligent and often based on what they think the middle of the image should be. An external light meter still gives you more control.

Rather, I just want to point out that shooting and correcting for "blinkies" or the histogram can be inaccurate. Early on, it certainly led me to shoot way more brackets for HDR processing than I never actually needed (thankfully).

I don't know what more control an external light meter gives me, except with studio work.

I just learned that in the Nikon D810 and D750 a fourth metering mode is introduced, the highlight-weighted metering mode. http://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and...ring-mode.html

George

[Donald]

That's a beautiful photos... As someone that grew up within a 2-hour drive of Yosemite, I'd say I've never gotten a photo so good in that spot.

Thank you.

[dennybeall]

Well, you've wet our appetite, Now you have to give us MORE!
Nice, thanks for sharing.

[emalvick]

The raw-converter generates a rgb-raster image that can be viewed on your screen or being saved to disk and opened again to be viewed. In both case the rgb-raster image is the source of the visible image. But in case of the jpeg-file it has been compressed and therefore has most likely less blinkies. Assumed you're using the same converter, the same settings and no treshold.




That might be a trick that works. But only if you want to edit the file anyway. It won't be advisible if you shoot jpeg.



I don't know what more control an external light meter gives me, except with studio work.

I just learned that in the Nikon D810 and D750 a fourth metering mode is introduced, the highlight-weighted metering mode. http://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and...ring-mode.html

George

Write all my previous post was regard to in-camera, and as I stated shooting with RAW. If you are shooting JPEG well, then the blinkies are an accurate representation of what you'll find when you move to computer and you'll have less room for recovering information or making major total adjustments.

But, when you are shooting RAW, the settings you have for the JPEG don't really matter except that they indicate what might be in the RAW file. In that case, I'm happy with a less than ideal JPEG image if it can show me everything that is within the RAW data. Most RAW processors (except maybe if you are using the proprietary one that comes with your camera) do not care where you are starting from with regard to the camera often having their own way of default processing or interpretting the image when it is opened (e.g. Lightroom and DxO).

[joebranko]

Very interesting thread. Apart from all the technical info I would to comment on the outstanding image you have posted. Absolutely a 5star image!

[george013]

Write all my previous post was regard to in-camera, and as I stated shooting with RAW. If you are shooting JPEG well, then the blinkies are an accurate representation of what you'll find when you move to computer and you'll have less room for recovering information or making major total adjustments.

But, when you are shooting RAW, the settings you have for the JPEG don't really matter except that they indicate what might be in the RAW file. In that case, I'm happy with a less than ideal JPEG image if it can show me everything that is within the RAW data. Most RAW processors (except maybe if you are using the proprietary one that comes with your camera) do not care where you are starting from with regard to the camera often having their own way of default processing or interpretting the image when it is opened (e.g. Lightroom and DxO).

I think we agree.
I only shoot raw with a Nikon and use CaptureNx2, the old one. I can get rid of blinkies easy just by correcting the contrast a little bit.
There where and will be more discussions about blinkies and raw and jpeg. And explained with the difference in bitdepth. Which is not true.
If one wants to examine differences between a raw and jpeg, just take a raw file, open it in your converter and save it as jpeg. Then open that jpeg again in the same raw converter, which I hope is possible, and compare them.

I hope Donald doesn't care too much about this discussion, but it's placed in General Photography Discussion.

George