Working in RAW and manual because I need to develop the skills. C&C P&TY

[JBW]

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Brian,

The subject capture here is good; I like the framing of it and it appears sharp.

Compositionally, my view is that the areas that are 'less productive' are in the background, which I can appreciate may be difficult for you to control at the time of shooting. Dealing with them in PP would be more to do with using cloning and 'burning' skills on the background foliage, especially over to the right side.

Unfortunately, the white border 'corrupts' my browser histogram, so I cannot assess accurately whether the apparently blown Red, Green and Blue channels are due to that alone (very likely in Blue) or perhaps also because the image was possibly a little over exposed.

Also, there's no EXIF information I can look at to gather what settings were used.

Together, these two factors make assisting your request for C&C with regard to "Working in RAW and manual because I need to develop the skills." difficult to impossible - we need more information; the EXIF data and the photo without a border, would help.

That said, when you shoot Manual and give us full disclosure of EXIF data, that still doesn't allow us to see how the metered reading differed from the exposure you used, which we'd have if you shoot say, Aperture priority - and use an Exposure Compensation offset. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear enough here - sorry.

[Shadowman]

Hi Brian,

The subject capture here is good; I like the framing of it and it appears sharp.

Unfortunately, the white border 'corrupts' my browser histogram, so I cannot assess accurately whether the apparently blown Red, Green and Blue channels are due to that alone (very likely in Blue) or perhaps also because the image was possibly a little over exposed.

That said, when you shoot Manual and give us full disclosure of EXIF data, that still doesn't allow us to see how the metered reading differed from the exposure you used, which we'd have if you shoot say, Aperture priority - and use an Exposure Compensation offset. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear enough here - sorry.

Dave,

Your comment about the border brought to mind something I've noticed during post processing, when I apply the white border, usually with a program such as NIK; when I bring the image back into Lightroom the software will indicate blown highlights. I'm wondering if Brian may have seen an alert and perhaps not responded to it?

[Shadowman]

Brian,

Still not able to use LightBox so had to reduce screen to 75% to take in all of the image. Nicely composed, I made a comment about the borders in response to Dave's, see post #3. Did you or were you able to view any highlight/shadow warnings after the border was applied to the shot?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi John,

Agreed - I think

Borders will (should) be applied after basic processing has been done, so I'd hope that highlight/shadow warnings and any work requiring reference to the histogram would have been dealt with by the time it was applied. If you look after applying a border, as you've observed, they become meaningless and should be ignored.

My point was simply that it makes it impossible for us to judge after the event. Any photo's for critique of 'early stages' of PP (and exposure) need to be posted without any border.

A border obviously enhances a 'finished image' - and then we can comment on that too (and Brian's are usually very well chosen), but doesn't help here.

[Manfred M]

I cannot assess accurately whether the apparently blown Red, Green and Blue channels are due to that alone (very likely in Blue) or perhaps also because the image was possibly a little over exposed.

Dave - I've imported a screen capture and trimmed the border off. All three channels are clipped at the bottom end (shadow details has been lost) and both the red and blue channels appear to have been clipped at the top end (most significant clipping on the red channel).

This is a shot that really needs a polarizer as the high end clipping is due to the specular highlights. That would reduce those and would add a bit more saturation to the rest of the plant.

[JBW]

Brian,

Still not able to use LightBox so had to reduce screen to 75% to take in all of the image. Nicely composed, I made a comment about the borders in response to Dave's, see post #3. Did you or were you able to view any highlight/shadow warnings after the border was applied to the shot?

No I wasn't. But before i added the border while i was in Sony express there were no major warning. A spot here or there but nothing major.

[JBW]

Hi Brian,

The subject capture here is good; I like the framing of it and it appears sharp.

Compositionally, my view is that the areas that are 'less productive' are in the background, which I can appreciate may be difficult for you to control at the time of shooting. Dealing with them in PP would be more to do with using cloning and 'burning' skills on the background foliage, especially over to the right side.

Unfortunately, the white border 'corrupts' my browser histogram, so I cannot assess accurately whether the apparently blown Red, Green and Blue channels are due to that alone (very likely in Blue) or perhaps also because the image was possibly a little over exposed.

Also, there's no EXIF information I can look at to gather what settings were used.

Together, these two factors make assisting your request for C&C with regard to "Working in RAW and manual because I need to develop the skills." difficult to impossible - we need more information; the EXIF data and the photo without a border, would help.

That said, when you shoot Manual and give us full disclosure of EXIF data, that still doesn't allow us to see how the metered reading differed from the exposure you used, which we'd have if you shoot say, Aperture priority - and use an Exposure Compensation offset. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear enough here - sorry.

I agree about the foliage top right. Moving it is an option that I should have thought of.

I will try to figure out how to get EXIF data posted with the shot.

I will loose the frame for C in C.

It is late but clear enough.

[Manfred M]

No I wasn't. But before i added the border while i was in Sony express there were no major warning. A spot here or there but nothing major.

Brian - given the amount of clipping at the high end, I suspect that the reason you did not see any warning is because there likely was no clipping in the raw data. The jpeg conversion can be the culprit here.

This is the RGB histogram, so it does not show the individual clipped channels.



The histogram shows us what is there (based on the jpeg image). What I find interesting is that the rightmost 20% of the histogram is virtually all related to the specular highlights on the top edge of the small flower that is behind and to the right of the large flower.

You really need to do something about the light (hint - shoot when the sun is low and not causing issues).

[Manfred M]

I will try to figure out how to get EXIF data posted with the shot.

Normally this data is embedded in the file that you upload, but sometimes this gets stripped out. This is something your file hosting service does for you when you upload the image files, whether you want it to or not.

No simple easy solution here. I will sometimes manually input date and time I took the shot, ISO setting, aperture, shutter speed and focal length used on the shot (my file host does this too).