How the heck....?

[TwoTwoLeft]

...do you get those crystal clear images?? I keep trying and this is my best one yet....



I use a tripod, have a good lens, shoot in RAW edit in TIFF 16 and my sky is still pixelated... I'm using photomatix & aperture 3....

 

[Overread]

Out of interest how many shots are you using for the HDRs? Also in your process are you finding that you are adding brightness/exposure (in RAW editing) to the sliders for the sky components? If so one big cause of noise is underexposing and then boosting the brightness of an area - as it really shows up the noise a lot more.
Also a look at a 100% crop of the sky areas would help - its hard to tell how pixelated the sky is from a web resize (for 100% crops take a crop of the photo before you resize for the net. Cropping out a chunk that is not too big and then saving that section alone - that way its not too big for the net, but we can see the 100% quality from the fullsized photo - note giving an idea what camera body you are using is also important - since different bodies/MP will have a different 100% "look"

 

[TwoTwoLeft]

This was only 3 shots at -2,0 & +2. The sky was quite a bit blown out in the +2 shot. In the processing I found I was having to burn the sky in and the clouds a little. I was using a 60D with the EFs 15-85, ISO 100, no filter. Would a ND gradient or CPL help? Or should I just bracket over several different ranges and pick the best? I find that the evening, sunset type shots is where I'm having this problem.

 

[Overread]

Hmm why are you burning in the sky in the +2 shot for an HDR shot? Wouldn't it just be simpler to HDR the shots (either through software or manually) to make use of the better exposed sky in the 0 or even -2 exposure.

Bracketing and HDR/Tonemapping are certainly valid approaches, more so today than in the past with film if simply because its quicker today than it ever was. Filters are still a great tool though and when used correctly give you some great shots. They also let you cut down on light and get everything into a single exposure without additional work - this is often a great thing when out in the field (you get the shot in one).
In this shots case if you'd have used a graduated ND filter you could have darkened the sky and had the foreground land exposed for - the mountains on the right side would have been darker as a result (since filters give a line of change) though a soft graduated filter would not have been too bad for that effect in this shots case.

 

[TwoTwoLeft]

Hmm why are you burning in the sky in the +2 shot for an HDR shot? Wouldn't it just be simpler to HDR the shots (either through software or manually) to make use of the better exposed sky in the 0 or even -2 exposure.

Bracketing and HDR/Tonemapping are certainly valid approaches, more so today than in the past with film if simply because its quicker today than it ever was. Filters are still a great tool though and when used correctly give you some great shots. They also let you cut down on light and get everything into a single exposure without additional work - this is often a great thing when out in the field (you get the shot in one).
In this shots case if you'd have used a graduated ND filter you could have darkened the sky and had the foreground land exposed for - the mountains on the right side would have been darker as a result (since filters give a line of change) though a soft graduated filter would not have been too bad for that effect in this shots case.

I was burning the clouds/sky in aperture, after the images were HDR processed as a 16bit tiff.

Here is the image straight out of HDR processing



Here is a 100% crop

 

[Overread]

I honestly can't see any pixelation - heck I can't even see any noise in that sky from the 100% crop. It looks wonderfully clean!

 

[TwoTwoLeft]

Here's the 100% crop of the original image I posted... The only thing I did was burn in the sky. The image on Flickr looks pretty much identical to image on Aperture. See how the sky is blochy? The color changes don't appear to be smooth like in Over Exposed's Rapture and Blissful awakening....




I just scrolled down in the HDR thread, and discovered "banding". I didnt know what its called... So I'll research how to get rid of that in Aperture....

Thanks for your help.

 

[Overread]

Out of interest are those blotches in the sky ( the really dark oblong dots) supposed to be birds? If not then you've got dustspots on your sensor. Dust or birds I'd clone them out (as currently they just look like distracting dust blotches).

As for the banding - I can just see it, but I'd not consider it that harsh to be honest. You might be able to get some improvement by tweaking the HDR software settings you're using and other might be able to give better advice on controlling the effect. A fourth exposure at -3 or even 4 stops might also have helped if your software is already making you have to burn in the sky.

In the field a bit of paper and pen can help - use the spot meter to meter each of the various spots in your shot - get an idea of the spread of values from the very brightest to the darkest areas and then see how many stops you have between them (typically fix aperture and ISO and then see how the shutter speed varies). Then you can better choose if you need just 2, 3, 4 or more exposures to blend later. You can of course cut down on exposures used at the editing stage - but you can't add them in if you didn't take them to start with.

 

[SlickSalmon]

This type of shot -- deep focus depth; wide dynamic range; moving subject -- presents a huge number of technical challenges.

A -2,0,+2 exposure series will rarely be adequate when shooting directly into a light source (particularly the sun), because the dynamic range of the scene will be too great. You've got 12-14 EV here, so you will need additional exposures. If you metered for the sun, then the sky will be underexposed and, hence, pixelated. If you metered for the sky, then the sun will get blown out. So, how you handle the exposures depends on how you're metering the scene. But in any case, you'll need more exposures over a wider range.

Banding across areas of broad tonality (like sky) is always an issue when post-processing with 8-bit programs. There are a number of tricks to deal with it. Another issue will be ghosting artifacts from the moving ripples in the water and the moving sun, both of which are exacerbated by the small aperture needed for this kind of focus depth. Photomatix 4's ghosting routine can help with this. But, ultimately, I think that if this is the kind of shot you'd like to take, you'll be happier with a copy of Photoshop CS and some experience with layer masking.

 

[Dmitri]

As long as you have it on a tripod, don't bother with bracketing. Just stick it in manual mode, pop the shutter speed up high enough that you get all the dark info in, take a shot. Knock the shutter speed down a step, take a shot, etc. until your highs are low. Depending on what you're shooting, 5-15 shots. You'll see a huge difference!

 

[Over Exposed]

Thanks for the kind words on my images! I'll give you a run down on how I handle these issues, some of which has already been touched on.

First off, I'm not really seeing pixelation here, more just minor noise and maybe minor banding from what I can tell. I'll cover these issues a bit further down here but I'd like to run through my thought process on this particular scene start to finish.

If I were standing there viewing this scene, I would first develop what I'd like to see as a result. For me, with rippled water like this I'd want to smooth it out for that foggy/smokey effect. To do this I'd use an ND filter to slow my shutter speed down. Next I'd set my aperture for the depth of field I wanted, which in this case I'd probably take it to the f/20 or higher range (This also allows for slower shutter speeds there again for the effect I'm going for on the water). Next, I would decide how much of a sunburst I want to create. For a pinpoint sunburst, I would start my exposure at a fast enough shutter speed to expose for a small pinpoint of the sun itself. Then, keeping everything locked and steady on the tripod, I would work my way down 1 stop at a time until my foreground areas are all properly exposed and a stop or two beyond. If all was done properly, my exposures which light the water will all be pretty silky smooth.

In processing I often times use anywhere from 9-14 exposures. More exposures tends reduce the amount of noise. I'll work an image pretty heavily in Photomatix. There is not a single photomatix package preset I use, but I do have a large bank of my own that can be useful as a starting point or to see how different approaches effect that particular image in a general sense. For example, I may process a batch of landscapes from a cloudy day with good visibility under the clouds and save the setting used under "cloudy day-good visibility". A week or two later I may shoot in incredibly similar situations so I may try this present I saved to see where it starts me. Sometimes it's a great starting point, sometimes not. If it isn't, I'll save a new preset once I reach my goal with the new images and name it something like "cloudy day-good visibility 2" and so on. To help keep noise at bay, work your smoothing controls (main, highlight and micro smoothing being more important usually than shadow smoothing) together to achieve a balance of lower noise, and definition in the highlights wanted (And no haloing of course!).

Once finalized in Pmatix, I take my images into photoshop. I usually sharpen a little, and try out some noise reduction. I use noiseware for noise reduction, and it is important to note that there are many instances where removal of the noise in a pastel or highly gradient sky can reveal major banding. I work in 16 bit TIFF's and believe me, this is still an issue. I'll use an independent layer for my noise reduction application so that it can be removed or blended easily as I work through the image. Using noise reduction, then using the banding reduction method linked in the forum post here that you read typically just gives the same results and not using noise reduction in the first place.

While I am not going to run through all the different options of editing in Photoshop, one that I do use often is selective color to apply color correction when needed. When shooting into the sun, I often times find the greens will get that 'electric neon' look. Going into the YELLOW spectrum and reducing the yellow and raising the cyan to find a good balance. Sometimes though further more in depth tactics are needed to resolve color correction, but often the above does just fine.

Hope that helps some!

 

[TwoTwoLeft]

Thanks! That actually helps out a lot! Just ordered a couple of ND filters for the new lens I was working with.

I must be learning something because I pretty much understood all of that!