Neuchatel through a Helios 44-2

[samuelh]

Thanks for your help. perhaps this should go into another thread but here's one of the photo's taken as part of the pano with the raw .x3f file converted as is into a jpeg. You can see the yellow cast; this was a greyish morning by the lake

View attachment 1779

 

[Steaphany]

Sam,

I tried sending you a private message but you have that turned off, I temporary left a connect message on your forum profile page.

 

[Steaphany]

Sam,

Thank you for the JPG. I'll see what I can do when you can get the X3F file to me, it would be interesting to see if a pure SPP manipulation could fix this image, but until then, I was able to make some nice color balance improvements.

I opened the JPG in Photoshop and created a Levels Adjustment Layer. I then picked a Black point using the Black Color Picker and a White point using the White Color Picker. The important thing to consider is what to sample when choosing these reference points. This is what I used:

View attachment 1782

The foreground back lit leaf was easy and only produced a subtle correction. The cloud up and left of the Sun made a good White reference. I did not choose the region of the intense white where the Sun's located since these value are too extreme to make a good Levels White set point.

This is the result:

View attachment 1783

The bright area surrounding the Sun is brighter, while still preserving sufficient obscuring cloud detail, The sky is blue, and the image has a better over all contrast.

No other manipulations were made except those needed to post the images here.

So you can play with this yourself within Photoshop and to see exactly how I did this, here is a RapidShare download link to the Photoshop PSD file:

http://rapidshare.com/files/249384825/SDIM1128b.psd.html

 

[Steaphany]

Thanks Sam, I have already downloaded the X3F file and ran it through SPP Version 3.5 letting it calculate the Auto adjustments which turned out to be:

Exposure			0.1
Contrast			0.3
Shadow			0.2
Highlight			-1.1
Saturation			0.2
Sharpness			0.0
X3 Fill Light		0.4
Color Adjustment		4C+4M

I than made my own adjustments:

Raising Exposure to	1.0
Raising Highlight to	0.0
Raising Saturation to 	0.8
Raising X3 Fill Light to	0.7

I then used the Color Adjustment Color Picker to select the same White point that I chose in Photoshop, clicking on the same cloud. This brought the Color Adjustment to 15C+17M.

I saved the setting within SPP under the name "Sams_Fix" and then exported the settings. Here is the down load link for the XML file:

http://rapidshare.com/files/249402426/Sams_Fix.xml.html

To use it, just download and save the XML file to your computer. In SPP, click on File, then Import to read this file. When you have an X3F file open, the Sams_Fix setting will be available in the Settings Pull Down Menu.

To see the results first hand, here is the download link to the saved 16 bit per channel (48 bit per pixel) Tiff file, 27MB in size:

http://rapidshare.com/files/249406161/SDIM1128.tif.html

Remember, the SD14 uses 12 Bit Analog to Digital Converters. When a file is saved as a JPG, you loose 4 bits per channel in available dynamic range. Saving a file as a 16 Bit Tiff preserves the dynamic range, provides some head room for the adjustments, and the compression is completely lossless.

If your pano stitcher can read and work with these Tiff files, you will be able to get the best possible composite image. If by any chance your stitcher can not read these 16 bit per channel Tiffs, you can use Photoshop to open the Tiff and save the file into another stitcher compatible format. Just make sure to preserve the image bit depth and that any compression is lossless.

As a preview, I converted the Tiff file to JPG with a resolution reduction to fit here:

View attachment 1784

Look at the difference between this and the JPG corrected in Photoshop. The foreground backlit leaves are green, you can see them and they are no longer deep within shadow, the Sky is blue, the distant horizon is clear with out any toxic green smog, It's brighter with good contrast.

I'd like to see how the final pano turns out.

 

[Steaphany]

Just for continuity, here is the content of the Sams_Fix.XML file:

<Custom>
	<Settings>
		<Setting Name="Sams_Fix">
			<Tone Blackness="0.20" Contrast="0.30" Exposure="1.00" Highlight="0.00" Saturation="0.80" Sharpness="0.00" FillLight="0.70"/>
			<Color ColorAdjustR="0.707946" ColorAdjustG="0.676083" ColorAdjustB="1.000000"/>
			<WhiteBalance WhiteBalance="0"/>
		</Setting>
	</Settings>
</Custom>

 

[samuelh]

Hi Steaphany,

Wow, thank you very much - it goes to show how much i have still to learn. I am still in the process of downloading the files but in the meantime using your settings in SPP I end up with the final product (downsized for uploading) like so

View attachment 1785

There are still bits of noise that I'd like to clean up, perhaps also in the way I expose, but this learning process is fun. Thanks heaps for your guidance here.

Cheers,
Sam

 

[Steaphany]

The pano looks great.

To get a handle on the noise, here's a suggestion, never photograph darks :uhoh:. I know, an impossibility, but you can get less noise if you create High Dynamic Range images which you then stitch together to create your pano.

The trick is to shoot multiple exposures of each frame so that, among the frame collection, every thing in the scene is photographed at an ideal exposure in at least in one of them.

Shoot bracketed exposures. For this scene, a point to start may be -2, 0, and +2 EV. Or you can manually select the exposure if you need to exceed +/-3EV. Manually setting the exposures will also permit more than 3 images, allowing for exposure set of -5, -2, 0, +2, and +5 EV. What complicates a pano such as your example here is that in one frame, you have the Sun and in others your look well away from the Sun at far darker scenes. The bracketing range needs to potentially span quite a large range.

Post processing now becomes more complex since you'll need to stack each frames multiple exposures into a single HDR image prior to or as you stitch the images together. Some pano stitchers have HDR functionality. Others may require you to HDR merge the individual frames as a separate operation, potentially with a different piece of software, prior to stitching.

Be careful with the HDR merging. I have seen examples where the source exposures were "too ideal" and when merged the final image had an unreal look with obvious shadow areas being brightly lit.

 

[Taz]

How did you get the Helios to work on the SD14? I have the same lens and it hits the IR filter if you try to focus to infinity.

 

[Bustoner]

How did you get the Helios to work on the SD14? I have the same lens and it hits the IR filter if you try to focus to infinity.

Post a photo.... maybe he cut a little bit

 

[samuelh]

How did you get the Helios to work on the SD14? I have the same lens and it hits the IR filter if you try to focus to infinity.

Hi Taz,

I've gotta admit that the IR filter has a couple of marks on it from the lens but it does focus to infinity. here's an example
View attachment 1940

I'm using an adapter bought off ebay and recommended by a number of forums - I can search it out for you later if need be.

HTH