Not Quite Ready for Prime Time- Kitchen

[Loose Canon]

I am trying to semi-methodically try out some different techniques for this genre. It seems like there are about as many of them as there are folks doing them! So I need to find out what works, and when, and when to spend more time fussing with what! And what is going to work for me personally if I become one of those folks who do this kind of thing often. This among plenty of other things!

One thing I see a lot of folks doing is exposure fusion. Some even doing full-on HDR/tonemapping, etc. I like the idea of exposure fusion (always have) and have gotten some fairly nice results with it (surprisingly good for me certainly)!

This version is a straight (meaning no flash fired) 7-shot exposure bracket at one stop difference per bracket from -3 to +3 stops, and then fused via computer program. Probably a little overkill on the bracketing but I didn’t try it with less exposures. This was not hand fused in any way but tweaked after the fusion process.

I saved a lot of time on the front end (at the camera), but spent a lot of time in post. It was a lot of stuff that was done automatically, which is not the way I usually roll! It ended with a very “clinical” look and though I like it I don’t find it truly representative of the space and that was due to a huge oversight on my part.

I’ll save us all some time! I apologize for the “Refrigerator Art”! I moved most all the crap off the counters but I was not about to touch the “stuff” magneted (is that a word?) to the refrigerator! I coulda/shoulda adjusted the composition to exclude that. I did in the re-shoot today!

I think the chair in the distant space needs something else. I re-shot the scene with some different techniques and did something different for that entryway, which I liked better.

The front two bar chairs I think should go. The re-shoot confirmed that for me.

Curved stainless steel surfaces are a PITA! I could probably shoot this in the studio as a product and make it look like a centerfold model! It in its environment is another story for me!

I am ambivalent about the fruit/veggie bowl! It is blocking something in the scene that I didn’t want to be obvious. The flowers? Well they were on the counter so I moved them there! Call it “a splash of color that draws the eye through the frame”! (couldn’t think of anything better!)

Let ‘er rip guys! I’m having fun and not a small amount of issues and the stupid yard needs mowing! Mrs. Canon can’t wait forever for me to get this right and spark off the lawnmower!

[IzzieK]

I was wondering about that chair in the distance...It looks like it belongs to the breakfast bar...well, at least your kitchen is neater than mine...I have small appliances lining my breakfast bar for ease of access as I cook a lot for my crew...what is that thing hanging at the left side near the tap?

[Shadowman]

I think it's a good experiment and worth further exploring. I don't see anything wrong with this particular composition, it's very typical of most kitchens, perhaps a bit too pristine especially after one of my chili preparation endeavors. I'm surprised a 7-shot exposure didn't provide richer shadows, perhaps you edited to eliminate, I would have kept some shadows somewhere within the composition, but then this isn't my image.

[Loose Canon]

Hey thanks guys!

This kitchen is way messier than yours Izzie! Its just that I scraped off all the crap to the floor where you can’t see it! Dog treats, block of knives, coffee makers (yes two!), microwave, assorted paperwork, notes, phones, keys, glasses, well, you get the drift! Kind of a catch-all! I even did all the dishes in the sink!

Not to mention the chili drop pins!

Oh, the thing is a paper towel holder. Maybe I should have put a full roll in to to avoid confusion?

Not sure what you are thinking John. I’m seeing a lot of shadow, just not too many hard or deep ones. I didn’t really process to eliminate shadow, but I didn’t really do anything on purpose to accentuate them either. Remember this is an exposure fusion and not tonemapped. Would that be the difference you are seeing?

[Shadowman]

Hey thanks guys!

This kitchen is way messier than yours Izzie! Its just that I scraped off all the crap to the floor where you can’t see it! Dog treats, block of knives, coffee makers (yes two!), microwave, assorted paperwork, notes, phones, keys, glasses, well, you get the drift! Kind of a catch-all! I even did all the dishes in the sink!

Not to mention the chili drop pins!

Oh, the thing is a paper towel holder. Maybe I should have put a full roll in to to avoid confusion?

Not sure what you are thinking John. I’m seeing a lot of shadow, just not too many hard or deep ones. I didn’t really process to eliminate shadow, but I didn’t really do anything on purpose to accentuate them either. Remember this is an exposure fusion and not tonemapped. Would that be the difference you are seeing?

I just thought a -3 stop would have contributed something more to the shadows. Whether photomerging or tone mapping I usually have to adjust one end of the dynamic range to get the blended image under control, if I don't the final image will have that tone mapped look, however usually a -3 stop will have significant shadow capture and it would've/should've been present in your final image.

[Loose Canon]

Interesting John.

I didn’t try anything less. To be honest I thought the outer exposures may have been useless. Way too under/over exposed. I wonder now if the +3 may have offset the -3. I’ll put it on the huge list of how am I going to try to get a handle on this thang!

Get any info let me know?

[Rob Ekins]

Another strong shot Terry.

What I would change:
Separate the two chairs in the foreground, don't worry that one will be slightly in front of the cabinet.
Remove the chair in the BG.
Clone out the paper holder.
Move the fruit bowl back to the rear bench, see my point on visual blocking in your other thread.
Crop out the edge of the fridge it is messy and distracting.
Tone down the brightness in the back room, it drags your eye right there. It needs to be lit but you want the viewer to stay in the main space.
Blend in a frame with not so many reflections on the aluminium of the fridge, alternately select the fridge in post and desaturate it, not completely just enough to kill those high lights, use the opacity of the layer mask for this.
The shot needs more of the ambient frame and less of the interior lights which are blown out and blowing out the whites of the cabinets.
Again I think you are letting the software dictate the outcome of the shot.

On the plus side:
Your camera height is pretty spot on, no ugly under cabinets in view and not looking down into the space, we can see just enough of the under bench cabinets.
WB is good.
Verticals are....vertical.


As I said in the other thread this shot is as good if not better than a lot of shots I have seen in your area. So please take my comments as positive feedback, some are a bit nitpicky but those minor changes will help lead to stronger a finished product.

[Shadowman]

Interesting John.

I didn’t try anything less. To be honest I thought the outer exposures may have been useless. Way too under/over exposed. I wonder now if the +3 may have offset the -3. I’ll put it on the huge list of how am I going to try to get a handle on this thang!

Get any info let me know?

Terry,

I would start with a supposedly correct exposure, I say supposedly because that could mean one or two things. A correct exposure could be what the camera determines to be a correct exposure (shot in aperture, shutter speed or even P mode) or what you determine to be a correct exposure based on histogram or corrected settings based on camera alerts (highlight or shadow warning) and on what you believe to be a correct exposure.

With a supposedly correct exposure, I would analyze image detail in shadows and highlight area and determine if my camera is capable of totally capturing the scene. You never stated that capturing the scene in-camera was an issue, it seems that you are concentrating on a technique and a specific look; so continue with your current efforts. I like what I'm seeing, I'm just responding based on my personal tastes and what I would normally expect to see in this particular type of capture.

[Dave Humphries]

My musings, nothing more;

I agree with most of what Rob says, although I was going to suggest straightening the verticals; they are good on the right, but (I think) slightly out over on the left, so it really needs a gnat's-tad of clockwise rotation, then possibly a minor perspective nudge. Or cheat; with a yank outwards of free transform lower left, then crop as necessary.

I was also going to mention the shooting (viewpoint) height, for me personally, my eyes wouldn't be at that height; i.e. level with lower edge of wall cabinets (I'd be a bit higher) - but I suspect this is a very subjective area and I bow to Rob's obviously extensive knowledge of the genre as to what looks best. I suspect shooting from any higher might increase perspective issues and also not help with a good balance of ceiling vs floor and that's probably what I have learnt analysing your shot and writing this. However, it would give more space to hide stuff out of sight

Add me to your list of passive followers of your interiors threads.


We had a member here _GUI_ (Guillermo), way back in the 2008-2009 era, who's work with HDR, RAW and reducing noise in RAW convertors, particularly with interiors was very interesting. Sadly a lot of his threads here at CiC have lost their images since posting some 7 years ago, however he has a website which might be of interest to some.

[xpatUSA]

We had a member here _GUI_ (Guillermo), way back in the 2008-2009 era, who's work with HDR, RAW and reducing noise in RAW convertors, particularly with interiors was very interesting. Sadly a lot of his threads here at CiC have lost their images since posting some 7 years ago, however he has a website which might be of interest to some.

I've found Guillermo Luijck's articles very helpful as they do not skim over the surface of any subject, they explain well and do not plagiarize material from other sites. Particularly, his article on UniWB is a tour de force for those interested. Another one which I think is entitled "where does the magenta come from?" may help some with reddish highlights.

I think he favors Canon cameras, or did back then.

[Helen Kolb]

Hi Terry, since I don't know what most are talking about, I cannot really comment - however I wondered about the curious effect on the roof, or is it my screen/eyes? Seems to have a stippled effect in the middle going backward. Far too clean that kitchen! Helen

[xpatUSA]

One thing I see a lot of folks doing is exposure fusion. Some even doing full-on HDR/tonemapping, etc. I like the idea of exposure fusion (always have) and have gotten some fairly nice results with it (surprisingly good for me certainly)!

What exposure fusion software are you using? I was thinking about TuFuse Pro (for Windows 7) - not wishing to use a plug-in and would prefer a GUI rather than command-line.

[Rob Ekins]

My musings, nothing more;

I agree with most of what Rob says, although I was going to suggest straightening the verticals; they are good on the right, but (I think) slightly out over on the left, so it really needs a gnat's-tad of clockwise rotation, then possibly a minor perspective nudge. Or cheat; with a yank outwards of free transform lower left, then crop as necessary.

Dave,
You are right, in my head I had already cropped to eliminate the edge of the fridge (See my 5th point) which would make a stronger image and fix that error.

I think what both of us are trying to highlight is that particularly in this genre and more broadly in photography, if you are going to put a straight line next to the edge of a frame you need to get it right or you are compromising your image.



.

[Loose Canon]

Thank you again guys. I really appreciate the feedback and I’m taking it all in as I try to figure what is going to be the best way for me to go about this.

Just as an aside I would like to mention that I would rather be “nitpicked” than not. I welcome and appreciate all comments for sure and consider myself extremely lucky to get them.

I decided to give a piece or two of software a chance to see if it would make things quicker. I was trying to see if there was an easier way out knowing there never really is! Or at least if there is I haven’t found it yet! I’m liking some of the software but I can already see its not going to be the best thing for all things. I figured I would end up doing it the “Olde Fashioned” way and that is by hand and that’s where I’ll probably go next. But the only way for me to know for sure is to try different things and see what is going to give me what I am after.

So Ted this was fused with EnfuseGUI.

Helen the ceiling is a textured ceiling, which is common. The house is an older house. Basically they take drywall mud and slather it on. Then in this case a mop head is tied together the end of it is used to make the texture.

[xpatUSA]

So Ted this was fused with EnfuseGUI.

Ta!

[Loose Canon]

I'm sorry Ted!

What, exactly, is a "Ta"?

[ST1]

I'm sorry Ted!

What, exactly, is a "Ta"?

Terry, I believe Ted is saying thank you

[Loose Canon]

Oh! Okay! I didn't know! Ta Peter!

In that case Ya (you're welcome) Ted!

[xpatUSA]

I'm sorry Ted!

What, exactly, is a "Ta"?

Sorry Terry, yes, as said above, it's English English slang for "thanks" . . They don't say "ta" in M'zurah?

Meanwhile, I've just been playing with exposure fusion a bit . . it looks promising in the right hands (not mine at the moment).

[xpatUSA]

I am trying to semi-methodically try out some different techniques for this genre. It seems like there are about as many of them as there are folks doing them! So I need to find out what works, and when, and when to spend more time fussing with what! And what is going to work for me personally if I become one of those folks who do this kind of thing often.

One thing I see a lot of folks doing is exposure fusion. I like the idea of exposure fusion (always have) and have gotten some fairly nice results with it (surprisingly good for me certainly)!

This version is a straight (meaning no flash fired) 7-shot exposure bracket at one stop difference per bracket from -3 to +3 stops, and then fused via computer program. Probably a little overkill on the bracketing but I didn’t try it with less exposures.

Just had to give it a shot, Terry, the reason being that Sigma cameras are not renowned for capture DR and it can be hard work, given a highly dynamic scene. I downloaded a trial version of TuFuse Pro and went out to the street for a late afternoon shoot with clouds and deep shadows. I took some manually-bracketed shots and ended up with four candidates for fusion:




Not a terribly good set but I persevered. Normally, I would have rejected all those with blown skies and post-processed the shot with visible clouds, so I did do that in addition to exposure fusing the four.

The two results compared:



To most folks, the right-hand rendition will look "better" but I've been recovering shadows in Sigma Photo Pro for years - whereas this is my first try at fusing and, to me, the potential is quite clear.

A bit more processing in FastStone Viewer and here's what I got:




I'm thinking that more fused images might be better - after all, my camera can do a whopping 5 exposure brackets.

I'm thinking it would behoove me to get the middle exposure more "middling".

I'm not sure what bracket amount is better for such high-DR scenes; my Sigma SD1M camera can go up to +/- 1.7 EV per bracket but that's gonna pretty wide . . what do y'all think?

[edit] I suppose it has to be scene-dependent - so maybe one could spot-meter the brightest cloud and then the deepest shadow (I usually shoot manual, therefore the spot meter does tell the tale). Then the difference would be the range to cover with the bracketing, d'ya think?