🤘🤔Nikon D800E, D810 and D850 Usable Dynamic Range Test and Budget Buying Advice👌🤘

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Andrew Astbury

Like it or not this video compares the real usable dynamic range of Nikons’ three most used cameras for landscape photography. Everyone bangs on endlessly about dynamic range when in fact most of them have no clue what they’re talking about. If you want to see the truth about dynamic range improvements since 2012 then the results of this video may well come as a shock!

If you want to see the tonal response curves of the three Nikon models AND the Canon 5DMk3 then click the image below to view at full size:

Sensor Size Myth – Again!

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Sensor Size Myth – “A bigger sensor gathers more light.”

If I hear this crap one more time either my head’s going to explode or I’m going to do some really nasty things to someone!

A larger sensor size does NOT necessarily gather any more light than a smaller sensor – END OF!

What DOES gather more light is BIGGER PHOTOSITES – those individual light receptors that cumulatively ‘make up’ the photosensitive surface plane of our camera sensor.

Above we have two fictional sensors, one with smaller physical dimensions and one with larger dimensions – the bottom one is a ‘larger sensor size’ than the top one, and the bottom one has TWICE as many photosites as the top one (analogous to more megapixels).

But the individual photosites in BOTH sensors are THE SAME SIZE.

Ignoring the factors of:

Micro Lens design
Variations in photosite design such as resistivity
Wiring Substrate
SNR & ADC

the photosites in both sensors will have exactly the same pixel pitch, reactivity to light, saturation capacity and base noise level.

However, if we now try to cram the number of photosites (megapixels) into the area of the SMALLER sensor – to increase the resolution:

we end up with SMALLER photosites.

We have a HIGHER pixel resolution but this comes with a multi-faceted major penalty:

Decreased Dynamic Range
Increased susceptibility to specular highlight clipping
Lower photosite SNR (signal to noise ratio)
Increased susceptibility to diffraction – f-stop limiting

And of course EXACTLY the same penalties are incurred when we increase the megapixel count of LARGER sensors too – the mega-pixel race – fueled by FOOLS and NO-NOTHING IDIOTS and accommodated by camera manufacturers trying to make a profit.

But this perennial argument that a sensor behaves like a window is stupid – it doesn’t matter if I look outside through a small window or a big one, the light value of the scene outside is the same.

Just because I make the window bigger the intensity of the light coming through it does NOT INCREASE.

And the ultimate proof of the stupidity and futility of the ‘big window vs small window’ argument lies with the ‘proper photographers’ like Ben Horne, Nick Carver and Steve O’nions to name but three – those who shoot FILM!

A 10″x8″ sheet of Provia 100 has exactly the same exposure characteristics as a roll of 35mm or 120/220 Provia 100, and yet the 10″x 8″ window is 59.73x the size of the 35mm window.

And don’t even get me started on the other argument the ‘bigger = more light’ idiots use – that of the solar panel!

“A bigger solar panel pumps out more volts so because it gathers more light, so a bigger sensor gathers more light so must pump out better images………”

What a load of shite…………

Firstly, SPs are cumulative and they increase their ‘megapixel count’ by growing in physical dimensions, not by making their ‘photosites’ smaller.

But if you cover half of one with a thick tarpaulin then the cumulative output of the panel drops dramatically!

Also, we want SPs to hit their clip point for maximum voltage generation (the clip point would be that where more light does NOT produce more volts!).

Our camera sensor CANNOT be thought of in the same way:

We are not interested in a cumulative output, and we don’t want all the photosites on our sensors to ‘max out’ otherwise we’ll have no tonal variation in our image will we…..!

The shot above is from a D800E fitted with a 21mm prime, ISO 100 and 2secs @f13.

If I’d have shot this with the same lens on the D500 and framed the same composition I’d have had to use a SHORTER exposure to prevent the highlights from clipping.

But if bigger sensors gather more light (FX gathers more than DX) I’d have theoretically have had expose LONGER……….and that would have been a disaster.

Seriously folks, when it comes to sensor size bigger ones (FX) do not gather more light than smaller (DX) sensors.

It’s not the sensor total area that does the light gathering, but the photosites contained therein – bigger photosites gather more light, have better SNR, are less prone to diffraction and result in a higher cumulative dynamic range for the sensor as a whole.

Do NOT believe anyone anywhere on any website, forum or YouTube channel who tells you any different because they a plain WRONG!

Where does this shite originate from you may ask?

Well, some while back FX dslr cameras where not made and everything from Canon and Nikon was APSC 1.5x or 1.6x, or APSH 1.3x. Canon was first with an FX digital then Nikon joined the fray with the D3.

Prior to the D3 we Nikon folk had the D300 DX which was 12.3Mp with a photosite area 30.36 microns²

The D3 FX came along with 12.1Mp but with a photosite area of 70.9 microns²

Better in low light than its DX counterpart due to these MASSIVE photosites it gave the dick heads, fools and no-nothing idiots the crackpot idea that a bigger sensor size gathers more light – and you know what……it stuck; and for some there’s no shifting it!

Hope this all makes sense folks.

Don’t forget, any questions or queries then just ask!

If you feel I deserve some support for putting this article together then please consider joining my membership site over on Patreon by using the link below.

Alternatively you could donate via PayPal to tuition@wildlifeinpixels.net

You can also find this article on the free-to-view section of my Patreon channel by clicking this link https://www.patreon.com/posts/sensor-size-myth-22242406

If you are not yet a member of my Patreon site then please consider it as members get benefits, with more membership perks planned over the next 3 months. Your support would be very much appreciated and rewarded.

Before I go, there’s a new video up on my YouTube Channel showing the sort of processing video I do for my Patreon Members.

You can see it here (it’s 23 minutes long so be warned!):

Please leave a comment on the video if you find it useful, and if you fancy joining my other members over on Patreon then I could be doing these for you too!

All the best

Andy

Dynamic Range, Mid Tones, Metering and ETTR

Posted on September 28, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Dynamic Range, Mid Tones, Metering and ETTR

I recently uploaded a video to my YouTube channel showing you an easy way to find the ‘usable dynamic range’ of you dSLR:

The other day I was out with Paul Atkins for a landscape session in the awesome Dinorwic Quarry in Llanberis, Snowdonia. Highly dynamic clouds and moody light made the place look more like Mordor!

Looking towards the top of the Llanberis Pass from the middle level of Dinorwic Quarry and Electric Mountain.

Here are the 6 unedited shots that make this finished panoramic view:

As you can see, the images are are shot in a vertical aspect ratio. Shooting at 200mm on the D800E this yields an assembled pano that is 16,000 x 7000 pixels; the advantages for both digital sales and print should be obvious to you!

As you can see, the bright parts of the sky are a lot brighter in the captures than they are in the finished image, but they are not ‘blown’. Also the shadows in the foreground are not choked or blocked.

In other words the captures are shot ETTR.

Meter – in camera or external.

Any light meter basically looks at a scene (or part thereof) and AVERAGES the tones that it sees. This average value value is then classed by the meter is MID GREY and the exposure is calculated in terms of the 3 variables you set – Time, Intensity and Applied Gain, or shutter, aperture and ISO.

But this leads to all sorts of problems.

All meters are calibrated to an ANSI Standard of 12% grey (though this gets a bit ambiguous between manufactures and testers). But you can get a good idea of what ‘light meter mid grey/mid tone” looks like by mentally assigning an RGB value of 118,118,118 to it.

However, we – humans – find 18% grey a more acceptable ‘mid tone grey’ both in print and on our modern monitors.

NOTE: 18% grey refers to the level of REFLECTANCE – it reflects 18% of the light falling on it. It can also be reproduced in Photoshop using a grey with 128,128.128 RGB values.

So problem number 1 is that of mid tone perception and the difference between what you ‘see’ and what the camera sees and then does in terms of exposure (if you let the camera make a decision for you).

128RGB grey versus 118RGB meter mid grey

Click on the pano image from Dinorwic to view it bigger, then try to FIND a mid grey that you could point your camera meter at – you can’t.

Remember, the grey you try to measure MUST be exactly mid-grey – try it, it’ll drive you nuts trying to find it!

This leads us to problem number 2.

Take your camera outside, find a white wall. Fill your frame with it and take a shot using ZERO exposure compensation – the wall will look GREY in the resulting shot not WHITE.

Next, find something matte black or near to it. Fill your frame with it and take another shot – the black will look grey in the shot not black(ish).

Problem number 3 is this – and it’s a bit of a two-headed serpent. An exposure meter of any kind is COLOUR BLIND but YOU can SEE colours but are tonally blinded to them to some degree or other:

Simple primary red, green and blue translate to vastly different grey tones which comes as a big surprise to a lot of folk, especially how tonally light green is.

Scene or Subject Brightness Range

Any scene in front of you and your camera has a range of tones from brightest to darkest, and this tonal range is the subject brightness range or SBR for short. Some folk even refer to it as the scene dynamic range.

If you put your camera meter into spot mode you can meter around your chosen scene and make note of the different exposure values for the brightest and darkest areas of your potential shot.

You camera spot meter isn’t the most accurate of spot meters because its ‘spot’ is just too big, typically between 4mm and 5mm, but it will serve to give you a pretty good idea of your potential SBR.

A 1 degree spot meter will, with correct usage, yield a somewhat more accurate picture (pun intended) of the precise SBR of the scene in front of you.

Right about now some of you will be thinking I’m hair-splitting and talking about unnecessary things in todays modern world of post-processing shadow and highlight recovery.

Photography today is full of folk who are prepared to forego the CRAFT of the expert photographer in favour of getting it half-right in camera and then using the crutch of software recovery to correct their mistakes.

Here’s the news – recovery of popped highlights is IMPOSSIBLE and recovery of shadows to anymore than a small degree results in pixel artifacting. Get this, two WRONGS do NOT make a RIGHT!

If the Mercedes F1 team went racing with the same attitude as the majority of camera users take pictures with, then F1 would be banned because drivers would die at an alarming rate and no car would ever make the finish line!

So, one way or another we can quantify our potential scene SBR.

“But Andy I don’t need to do that because my camera meter does that for me…….”

Oh no it does NOT, it just averages it to what IT THINKS is a correct mid tone grey – which it invariably isn’t!

This whole mid tone/mid grey ‘thing’ is a complete waste of time because:

It’s near impossible to find a true mid tone in your scene to take a reading off.
What you want as a mid tone will be at odds with your camera meter by at least 1/2stop.
If you are shooting wildlife or landscapes you can’t introduce a ‘grey card’.
Because of the above, your shot WILL BE UNDER EXPOSED.

“Yeah, but I can always bracket my shots and do an exposure blend Andy so you’re still talking crap….”

Two answers to that one:

You can’t bracket shots and blend if your MAIN subject is moving – de-ghosting is only effective on small parts of a scene with minimal movement between frames.
The popular “shoot and bracket two each end” makes you look like total dickhead and illustrates that you know less than zero about exposure. Try doing that on a paying job in front of the client and see how long you last in a commercial environment.

By far the BEST way of calculating exposure is the ETTR method.

ETTR, Expose to the Right.

If you meter for a highlight, your camera will treat that as a mid tone because your camera ASSUMES it’s a mid tone.

Your camera meter is a robot programmed to react to anything it sees in EXACTLY the same way. It doesn’t matter if your subject is a black cat in the coal house or a snow man in a snow storm, the result will be the same 118,118,118 grey sludge.

Mid tones are as we’ve already ascertained, difficult to pin down and full of ambiguity but highlights are not. So let’s meter the brightest area of the image and expose it hard over to the right of the histogram.

The simplest way to achieve this is to use your live view histogram with the camera in full manual mode.

Unlike the post-shot review histogram, the live-view histogram is not subject to jpeg compression, and can be thought of as something of a direct readout of scene tonality/brightness.

Using your exposure controls (usually shutter speed for landscape photography) you can increase your exposure to push the highlight peak of the histogram to the right as far as you can go before ‘hitting the wall’ on the right hand side of the histogram axis – in other words the camera sensor highlight clipping point.

Of course, this has the added benefit of shifting ALL the other tones ( mids and shadows) to the right as well,resulting in far less clipping potential in your shadow areas.

So back to Dinorwic again and here’s a shot that has been exposed ETTR on the live view histogram using spot metering over what I deemed to be the brightest area of the sky:

The red square indicates the approximate size of the spot meter area.

I was a naughty boy not recording this on video for you but I forgot to pack the HDMI lead for the video recorder – I’ll do one shortly!

The problem with using the Live View Histogram is that it can be a bit of a struggle to see it. your live view screen itself can be hard to see in certain light conditions outside, and the live view histogram itself is usually a bit on the small side – no where near as big as the image review histogram you can see here.

But looking at the review histogram above you can see that there’s a ‘little bit more juice’ to be had in terms of exposure of the highlights because of that tiny gap between the right end of the histogram and the ‘wall’ at the end of the axis.

Going back to the video the maximum ETTR ‘tipping point’ was centered around these three shots:

Clipped

Not Clipped (the one we allocated the star rating to). Exposure is -1/3rd stop below clipped.

Safe, but -2/3rd stop below Clipped.

The review histogram puts the Dinorwic shot highlights firmly in the same exposure bracket as ‘Safe, but -2/3rd stop below Clipped, and tells us there is another 1/3rd stop ‘more juice’ to be had!

So lengthening the exposure by 1/3rd stop and changing from 160th sec to 1/50th sec gives us this:

The red square indicates the approximate size of the spot meter area.

Live View Histogram ETTR

Live View Histogram plus 1/3 stop more juice! Highlights STILL below Clipping Point and shadows get 1/3rd stop more exposure.

That’s what it’s all about baby – MORE JUICE!

And you will not be in a position to confidently acquire more juice unless you find the USABLE DYNAMIC RANGE of your camera sensor.

The whole purpose of finding that usable DR is to discover where your highlight and shadow clipping points are – and they are very different between camera models.

For instance, the highlight clipping point value of the Nikon D850 is different from that of the Nikon D800E, but the shadow clipping point is pretty similar.

There is an awful lot more use to discovering your cameras usable dynamic range than a lot of folk imagine.

And if you do it the precise way then you can acquire a separate meter that will accept camera profiling:

You can create a dynamic range profile for your camera (and lens combo*) and then load it into the meter:

and then have your cameras usable dynamic range as part of the metering scale – so then you have NO EXCUSE for producing a less than optimum exposure.

(*)Note: yes, the lens does have an effect on dynamic range due to micro-contrast and light transmission variables – if you want to be super-picky!

AND THEY SAY HANDHELD METERS ARE DEAD, OLD TECH and of NO USE!!!

Anyone who says or even thinks that is a total KNOB.

Your camera dynamic range, the truthful one – FIND IT, KNOW IT, USE IT.

And don’t listen to the idiots and know-nothings, just listen and heed the advice of those of us who actually know what we’re doing.

NOTE: The value of grey (gray) cards and how to use them for accurate measurement is a subject in its own right and provides the curious with some really interesting reading. Believe me it’s far more expansive than the info I’ve given here. But adopting an ETTR approach when exposing to sensor that you KNOW the physical behavior of (dynamic response to light/dynamic range) can alleviate you of all critical mid-tone concerns.

This article has taken me over 8 hours to produce in total, and is yours to view for FREE. If you feel I deserve some support for doing this then please consider joining my membership site over on Patreon by using the link below.

Alternatively you could donate via PayPal to tuition@wildlifeinpixels.net

ETTR High Contrast Scene Processing.

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

ETTR High Contrast Scene Processing.

When faced with a high contrast scene like this most photographers would automatically resort to bracketing shots.

Sometimes you will be in a situation where shooting a bracketed sequence is difficult or impossible.

But a single image exposed to the right of the histogram – ETTR – where highlights are recorded at their maximum level of exposure can allow the camera sensor to capture far more detail in the darker areas than Lightroom will allow you to see at first glance.

Exposing to the right (of the in-camera histogram) correctly means that you expose the brightest scene highlights AS HIGHLIGHTS.

But it’s a balancing act between exposing them fully, and ‘blowing’ them.

Getting the ETTR exposure correct invariably means that the sensor receives MORE exposure across all tonal ranges, so you end up with more usefully recoverable shadow detail too.

In this video I show you a full Lightroom and Photoshop workflow to produce a noise-free image from a raw file exposed in just such a way.

Members of my Patreon site can download the all the workflow steps together with the raw file so that they can follow my processing, and perhaps come up with their own versions too!

Lumenzia Plugin for Photoshop: https://getdpd.com/cart/hoplink/21529?referrer=c0vpzfhvq7ks8cw8c

Lumenzia + Comprehensive Training: https://getdpd.com/cart/hoplink/21529?referrer=c0vpzfhvq7ks8cw8c&p=165704

Just to keep you up to speed on my video channel, here’s my previous video from last week which illustrates how I do my dust-spot and blemish removal in Photoshop:

Exposure Value – What does it mean?

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Exposure Value (Ev) – what does Ev mean?

I get asked this question every now and again because I frequently use it in the description annotations of image shot data here on the blog.

And I have to say from the outset the Exposure Value comes in two flavours – relative and absolute – and here I’m only talking mainly about the former.

So, let’s start with basic exposure.

Exposure can be thought of as Intensity x Time.

Intensity is controlled by our aperture, and time is controlled by our shutter speed.

This image was shot at 0.5sec (time), f11 (intensity) and ISO 100.

exposure value

We can think of the f11 intensity of light striking the sensor for 0.5sec as a ‘DOSAGE’ – and if that dosage results in the desired scene exposure then that dosage can be classed as the exposure value.

Let’s consider two exposure settings – 0.5sec at f11 ISO100 and 1sec at f16 ISO 100.

Technically speaking they are two different exposures, but BOTH result in the same light dosage at the sensor. The second exposure is TWICE the length of time but HALF the intensity.

So both exposures have the same Exposure Value or Ev.

The following exposure of the same scene is 1sec at f11 ISO 100:

exposure value

The image was shot at the same intensity (f11) but the shutter speed (time) was twice as long, and so the dosage was doubled. Double the dose = +1Ev!

And in this version the exposure was 0.25sec at f11 ISO 100:

exposure value

Here the light dosage at the sensor is HALF that of the correct/desired exposure because the time factor was halved while using the same intensity.

So half the dose = -1Ev!

Now some of you will be thinking that -1Ev is 1 stop under exposure – and you’d be right!

But Ev, or exposure value, is just a cleaner way of thinking about exposure because it doesn’t tie you to any specific camera setting – and it’s more easily transferable between cameras.

What Do I Mean by that?

Example – If I use say a 50mm prime lens on my Nikon D800E with the metering in matrix mode, ISO 100 and f14 I might get a metered exposure shutter speed of 1/10th of a second.

But if I replace the D800E with a D4 set at 100 ISO, matrix and f14 I’ll guarantee the metered shutter speed requirement will be either 1/13 or 1/15th of a second.

The D4 meters between -1/3Ev and -2/3Ev (in other words 1/2 stop) faster/brighter than the D800E when fitted with the same lens and set to the same aperture and ISO, and shooting exactly the same framing/composition.

Yet the ‘as metered’ shots from both cameras look pretty much the same with respect to light dosage – exposure value.

Exposure Settings Don’t Transfer between camera models very well, because the meter in a camera is calibrated to the response curve of the sensor.

A Canon 1DX Mk2 will usually generate a evaluative metered shutter speed 1/3rd of a stop faster than a matrix metered Nikon D4S for the same given focal length, aperture and ISO setting.

Both setups ‘as metered’ shots will look pretty much the same, but transposing the Canon settings to the Nikon will result in -1/3 stop under exposure – which on a digital camera is definitely NOT the way to go!

‘As Metered’ can be regarded as +/-0Ev for any camera (Note: this does NOT mean Ev=0!)

Any exposure compensation you use in order to achieve the ‘desired’ exposure on the other hand can be thought of as ‘metered + or – xEv’.

exposure compensation

Shot with the D4 plus 70-200 f2.8@70mm in manual exposure mode, 1/2000th sec, f8 and ISO 400 using +2/3Ev compensation.

The matrix metered exposure indicated by the camera before the exposure value compensation was 1/3200th – this would have made the Parasitic Jaeger (posh name for an Arctic Skua!) too dark.

A 1DXMk2 using the corresponding lens and focal length, f8, ISO 400 and evaluative metering would have wanted to generate a shutter speed of at least 1/4000th sec without any exposure compensation, and 1/2500th with +2/3Ev exposure compensation.

And if shot at those settings the Canon image would look pretty much like the above.

But if the Nikon D4 settings had been fully replicated on the Canon then the shot would be between 1/3 and 1/2 stop over exposed, risking ‘blowing’ of some of the under-wing and tail highlights.

So the simple lesson here is don’t use other photographers settings – they never work unless you’re on identical gear!

But if you are out with me and I tell you “matrix/evaluative plus 1Ev” then your exposure will have pretty much the same ‘light dosage’ as mine irrespective of you using the right shutter speed, aperture or ISO for the job or not!

I was brought up to think in terms of exposure value and Ev units, and to use light meters that had Ev scales on them – hell, the good ones still have ’em!

If you look up the ‘tech-specs’ for your camera you’ll find that metering sensitivity is normally quoted as an Ev range. And that’s not all – your auto focus may well have a low light Ev limited quoted too!

To all intents and purposes Ev units and your more familiar ‘f-stops’ amount to one and the same thing.

As we’ve seen before, different exposures in terms of intensity and time can have the same exposure value, and all Ev is concerned with is the cumulative outcome of our shutter speed, aperture and ISO choices.

Most of you will take exposures at ‘what the camera meter says’ settings, or you will use the meter indicated exposure as a baseline and modify the exposure settings with either positive or negative ‘weighting’ via your exposure compensation dial.

That’s Ev compensation relative to your meters baseline.

But have you ever asked yourself just how accurate your camera meter is?

So I’ve just stepped outside my front door and taken these two frames:

EV=15/Sunny 16 Rule 1/100th sec, f16, 100 ISO – click to view large.

Matrix Metering, no exposure compensation 1/200th sec, f16, ISO 100 – click to view large

These two raw files have been brought into Lightroom and THE ONLY adjustment has been to change the profile from Adobe Color to Camera Neutral.

Members of my subscription site can download the raw files and see for themselves.

Look at the histogram in both images!

The exposure for xxx164.NEF (the top image) is perfection personified while xxx162.NEF is under exposed by ONE WHOLE STOP – why?

Because the bottom image has been shot at the camera-specified matrix metered exposure, while the top image has been shot using the good old ‘Sunny 16 Rule’ that’s been around since God knows when!

“Yeah, but I could just use the shadow recovery slider on the bottom shot Andy….” Yes, you could, if you wanted to be an idle tit, and even then the top image would still be better because there’s no ‘recovery’ being used on it in the first place. Remember, more work at the camera means less work in processing!

Recovery of either shadows or highlights is ‘poor form’ and no substitute for correct exposure in the first place. Digital photography is just like shooting colour transparency film – you need to ‘peg the highlights’ as highlights BUT without over exposing them and causing them to ‘blow’.

In other words – ETTR, expose to the right!

And seeing as your camera meter wants to turn everything into midtone grey shite it’s the very last thing you should ever allow to dictate your final exposure settings – as the two images above prove beyond argument.

And herein lies the problem.

Even if you use the spot metering function the meter will read the brightness of what is covered by the ‘spot’ and then calculate the exposure required to expose that tonal brightness AS A MID TONE GREY.

That’s all fine ‘n dandy – if the metered area is actually an exact mid tone. But what if you were metering a highlight?

Then the metered exposure would want to expose said highlight as a midtone and the overall highlight exposure would be far too dark. And you can guess what would happen if you trusted your meter to spot-read a shadow.

A proper hand-held spot meter has an angle of view or AoV of 1 degree.

Your camera spot meter angle of view is dictated by the focal length of the lens you have fitted.

On my D800E for example, I need to have a lens AoV of around 130mm focal length equivalent for my spot to cover 1 degree, because the ‘spot’ is 4mm in diameter – total stupidity.

But it does function fairly well with wider angle lenses and exposure calculations when used in conjunction with the live view histogram. And that will be subject of my next blog post – or perhaps I’ll do a video for YouTube!

So I doubt this blog post about relative exposure compensation is going to light your world on fire – it began as an explanation to a recurring question about my exif annotation habits and snowballed somewhat from there!

But I’ll leave you with this little guide to the aforementioned Sunny 16 Rule, which has been around since Noah took up boat-building:

To use this table just set your ISO to 100.

Your shutter speed needs to be the reciprocal of your ISO – in other words 1/100 sec for use with the stated aperture values:

Aperture	Lighting conditions	Shadow PROPERTIES
f/22*	Snow/sand	Dark with sharp edges
f/16	Sunny	Distinct
f/11	Slight overcast	Soft around edges
f/8	Overcast	Barely visible
f/5.6**	Heavy overcast	No shadows
f/4	Open shade/sunset	No shadows

* – I would not shoot at f22 because of diffraction – try 1/200th f16

** – let’s try some cumulative Ev thinking here and go for more depth of field using f11 and sticking with 100 ISO. -2Ev intensity (f5.6 to f11) requires +2Ev on time, so 1/100th sec becomes 1/25th sec.

Over the years I’ve taken many people out on photo training days, and a lot of them seem to think I’m some sort of magician when I turn their camera on, switch it manual, dial in a couple of settings and produce a half decent image without ever looking at the meter on their camera.

It ain’t magic – I just had this table burnt into the back of my eyeballs years ago.

Works a charm – if you can do the mental calculations in your head, and that’s easy with practice. The skill is in evaluating your shooting conditions and relating them to the lighting and shadow descriptions.

And here’s a question for you; we know our camera meter wants to ‘peg’ what it’s measuring as a midtone irrespective of whether it’s measuring a midtone or not. But what do you think the Sunny 16 Rule is ‘pegging’ and where is it pegging it on the exposure curve?

If you can answer that question correctly then the other flavour of exposure value – absolute – might well be of distinct interest to you!

Give it a try, and if you use it correctly you’ll never be more than 1/3rd of a stop out, if that. Then you can go and unsubscribe from all those twats on YouTube who told you it was out-dated and defunct or never told you about it in the first place!

I hope you’ve found the information in this post useful.

I don’t monetize my YouTube videos or fill my blog posts with masses of affiliate links, and I rely solely on my patrons to help cover my time and server costs. If you would like to help me to produce more content please visit my Patreon page on the button above.

Many thanks and best light to you all.

Astro Landscape Photography

Posted on July 23, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Astro Landscape Photography

One of my patrons, Paul Smith, and I ventured down to Shropshire and the spectacular quartsite ridge of The Stiperstones to get this image of the Milky Way and Mars (the large bright ‘star’ above the rocks on the left).

I always work the same way for astro landscape photography, beginning with getting into position just before sunset.

Using the PhotoPills app on my phone I can see where the milky way will be positioned in my field of view at the time of peak sky darkness. This enables me to position the camera exactly where I want it for the best composition.

The biggest killer in astro landscape photography is excessive noise in the foreground.

The other problem is that foregrounds in most images of this genre are not sharp due to a lack of depth of field at the wide apertures you need to shoot the night sky at – f2.8 for example.

To get around this problem we need to shoot a separate foreground image at a lower ISO, a narrower aperture and focused closer to the camera.

Some photographers change focus, engage long exposure noise reduction and then shoot a very long exposure. But that’s an eminently risky thing to do in my opinion, both from a technical standpoint and one of time – a 60 minute exposure will take 120 minutes to complete.

The length of exposure is chosen to allow the very low photon-count from the foreground to ‘build-up’ on the sensor and produced a usable level of exposure from what little natural light is around.

From a visual perspective, when it works, the method produces images that can be spectacular because the light in the foreground matches the light in the sky in terms of directionality.

Light Painting

To get around the inconvenience of time and super-long exposures a lot of folk employ the technique of light painting their foregrounds.

Light painting – in my opinion – destroys the integrity of the finished image because it’s so bloody obvious! The direction of light that’s ‘painted’ on the foreground bares no resemblance to that of the sky.

The other problem with light painting is this – those that employ the technique hardly ever CHECK to see if they are in the field of view of another photographer – think about that one for a second or two!

My Method

As I mentioned before, I set up just before sunset. In the shot above I knew the milky way and Mars were not going to be where I wanted them until just after 1am, but I was set up by 9.20pm – yep, a long wait ahead, but always worth the effort.

Astro Landscape Photography

As we move towards the latter half of civil twilight I start shooting my foreground exposure, and I’ll shoot a few of these at regular intervals between then and mid nautical twilight.

Because I shoot raw the white balance set in camera is irrelevant, and can be balanced with that of the sky in Photoshop during post processing.

The key things here are that I have a shadowless even illumination of my foreground which is shot at a low ISO, in perfect focus, and shot at say f8 has great depth of field.

Once deep into blue hour and astronomical twilight the brighter stars are visible and so I now use full magnification in live view and focus on a bright star in the cameras field of view.

Then it’s a waiting game – waiting for the sky to darken to its maximum and the Milky Way to come into my desired position for my chosen composition.

Shooting the Sky

Astro landscape photography is all about showing the sky in context with the foreground – I have absolutely ZERO time for those popular YouTube photographers who composite a shot of the night sky into a landscape image shot in a different place or a different angle.

Good astro landscape photography HAS TO BE A COMPOSITE though – there is no way around that.

And by GOOD I mean producing a full resolution image that will sell through the agencies and print BIG if needed.

The key things that contribute to an image being classed good in my book are simple:

Pin-point stars with no trailing
Low noise
Sharp from ‘back’ to ‘front’.

Pin-points stars are solely down to correct shutter speed for your sensor size and megapixel count.

Low noise is covered by shooting a low ISO foreground and a sequence of high ISO sky images, and using Starry Landscape Stacker on Mac (Sequator on PC appears to be very similar) in conjunction with a mean or median stacking mode.

Further noise cancelling is achieved but the shooting of Dark Frames, and the typical wide-aperture vignetting is cancelled out by the creation of a flat field frame.

And ‘back to front’ image sharpness should be obvious to you from what I’ve already written!

So, I’ll typically shoot a sequence of 20 to 30 exposures – all one after the other with no breaks or pauses – and then a sequence of 20 to 30 dark frames.

Shutter speeds usually range from 4 to 6 seconds

Watch this video on my YouTube Channel about shutter speed:

Best viewed on the channel itself, and click the little cog icon to choose 1080pHD as the resolution.

Putting it all Together

Shooting all the frames for astro landscape photography is really quite simple.

Putting it all together is fairly simple and straight forward too – but it’s TEDIOUS and time-consuming if you want to do it properly.

The shot above took my a little over 4 hours!

And 80% of it is retouching in Photoshop.

I produce a very extensive training title – Complete Milky Way Photography Workflow – with teaches you EVERYTHING you need to know about the shooting and processing of astro landscape photography images – you can purchase it here – and if you use the offer code MWAY15 at the checkout you’ll get £15 off the purchase price.

But I wanted to try Raw Therapee for this Stiperstones image, and another of my patrons – Frank – wanted a video of processing methodology in Raw Therapee.

Easier said than done, cramming 4 hours into a typical YouTube video! But after about six attempts I think I’ve managed it, and you can see it here, but I warn you now that it’s 40 minutes long:

Best viewed on the channel itself, and click the little cog icon to choose 1080pHD as the resolution.

I hope you’ve found the information in this post useful, together with the YouTube videos.

Many thanks and best light to you all.

ETTR Processing in Lightroom

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

ETTR Processing in Lightroom

When we shoot ETTR (expose to the right) in bright, harsh light, Lightroom can sometimes get the wrong idea and make a real ‘hash’ of rendering the raw file.

Sometimes it can be so bad that the less experienced photographer can get the wrong impression of their raw file exposure – and in some extreme cases they may even ‘bin’ the image thinking it irretrievably over exposed.

I’ve just uploaded a video to my YouTube channel which shows you exactly what I’m talking about:

The image was shot by my client and patron Paul Smith when he visited the Mara back in October last year, and it’s a superb demo image of just how badly Lightroom can demosaic a straight forward +1.6 Ev ETTR shot.

Importing the raw file directly into Lightroom gives us this:

But importing the raw file directly into RawTherapee with no adjustments gives us this:

Just look at the two histogram versions – Lightroom is doing some crazy stuff to the image ‘in the background’ as there are ZERO develop settings applied.

But if you watch the video you’ll see that it’s quite straight forward to regain all that apparent ‘blown detail’.

And here’s the important bit – we do so WITHOUT the use of the shadow or highlight recovery sliders. Anyone who has purchased my sharpening videos HERE knows that those two sliders can VERY EASILY cause undesirable ‘pseudo-sharpening’ halos, and they should only be used with caution.

The way I process this +1.6 stop ETTR exposure inside Lightroom has revealed all the superb mid tone detail and given us a really good image that we could take into Photoshop and improve with some precision localized adjustments.

So don’t let Lightroom control you – you need to control IT!

Thanks for reading and watching.

You can also view this post on the free section of my Patreon pages HERE

If you feel this article and video has been beneficial to you and would like to see more per week, then supporting my Patreon page for as little as $1 per month would be a massive help. Thanks everyone!

Lumenzia – New Training

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Lumenzia – New Training Course Available

Regular subscribers to my blog and YouTube channel should know by know that I highly recommend Greg Benz’s Lumenzia plugin for Photoshop.

I know many readers of my blog have downloaded the Lumenzia plugin from my links dotted around the site, and previous posts such as HERE and HERE

Lumenzia is just about the best tool you can buy to help you master exposure blending using luminosity masks, but its uses do not stop there – I use it on quite a lot of my images for making ‘controlled tweaks’ in Photoshop.

But it is most readily associated with landscape photography exposure blending.

An awful lot of people have asked me if I’d do a set of comprehensive training videos on how to use Lumenzia, but that would be a little difficult to do without on-going additions as the plugin is frequently updated with new facilities.

But I’m pleased to say the Greg Benz (the plugin author) has just launched a comprehensive training course for Lumenzia, and I have bought the course myself!

Yes, that’s right – I’ve bought someone else’s training!

Lumenzia

After watching the videos that Greg has put together I can honestly say that the course is excellent – as you would expect.

The course is hosted on Teachable – so you don’t have to download any huge chunky videos either.

For those of you who already have the Lumenzia Photoshop plugin you can get the full course by clicking on the following link:

Exposure Blending Master Course

And for those of you you have NOT already got the plugin itself, you can buy it bundled with the training course on the link below:

Lumenzia + Exposure Blending Master Course

If you only want the plugin, you can still get that on its own by clicking below:

Lumenzia Plugin on its own click here.

Greg covers everything you need to know in order to leverage the power of Lumenzia. And anything that gets people to use Photoshop gets an extra ‘thumbs up’ from me!

Greg is the one trainer I know of who does what I do with my training videos – supply RAW files to support each of the lessons.

You will get raw files from various cameras including some D850 files, so you will have the added bonus of seeing how these cameras perform in the hands of an expert photographer.

So, I strongly urge you to use the links above and purchase this great training course from Greg Benz, and get to grips with Lumenzia.

You might be wondering why the heck I’m promoting training from someone else.

Well, the reasons are two-fold; I’ve already said that logistically it would be a nightmare because of the fundamental updates.

But more importantly, I’d never be able to teach you how Lumenzia works any better than Greg himself – he IS the plugin author, so it stands to reason!

Become a patron from as little as $1 per month, and help me produce more free content.

Patrons gain access to a variety of FREE rewards, discounts and bonuses.

YouTube Channel Latest Video Training

Posted on December 3, 2017 by Andrew Astbury

My YouTube Channel Latest Photography Video Training.

I’ve been busy this week adding more content to the old YouTube channel.

Adding content is really time-consuming, with recording times taking around twice the length of the final video.

Then there’s the editing, which usually takes around the same time, or a bit longer. Then encoding and compression and uploading takes around the same again.

So yes, a 25 minute video takes A LOT more than 25 minutes to make and make live for the world to view.

This weeks video training uploads are:

This video deals with the badly overlooked topic of raw file demosaicing.

Next up is:

This video is a refreshed version of getting contrast under control in Lightroom – particularly Lightroom Classic CC.

Then we have:

This video is something of a follow-up to the previous one, where I explain the essential differences between contrast and clarity.

And finally, one from yesterday – which is me, restraining myself from embarking on a full blown ‘rant’, all about the differences between DPI (dots per inch) and PPI (pixels per inch):

Important Note

Viewing these videos is essential for the betterment of your understanding – yes it is! And all I ask for in terms of repayment from yourselves is that you:

Click the main channel subscribe button HERE https://www.youtube.com/c/AndyAstbury
Give the video a ‘like’ by clicking the thumbs up!

YouTube is a funny old thing, but a substantial subscriber base and like videos will bring me closer to laying my hands on latest gear for me to review for you!

If all my blog subscribers would subscribe to my YouTube channel then my subs would more than treble – so go on, what are you waiting for.

I do like creating YouTube free content, but I do have to put food on the table, so I have to do ‘money making stuff’ as well, so I can’t afford to become a full-time YouTuber yet! But wow, would I like to be in that position.

So that’s that – appeal over.

Watch the videos, and if you have any particular topic you would like me to do a video on, then please just let me know. Either email me, or you can post in the comments below – no comment goes live here unless I approve it, so if you have a request but don’t want anyone else to see it, then just say.

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Patrons gain access to a variety of FREE rewards, discounts and bonuses.

The Importance of Finished Image Previsualization

Posted on November 27, 2017 by Andrew Astbury

The Importance of Finished Image Previsualization (Patreon Only).

For those of you who haven’t yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, I uploaded a video describing how I shot and processed the Lone Tree at Llyn Padarn in North Wales the other day.

You can view the video here:

Image previsualization is hugely important in all photography, but especially so in landscape photography.

Most of us do it in some way or other. Looking at images of a location by other photographers is the commonest form of image previsualization that I come across amongst most hobby photographers – and up to a point, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in that – as long as you put your own ‘slant’ on the shot.

But relying on this method alone has one massive Achilles Heel – nature does not always ‘play nice’ with the light!

You set off for your chosen location with a certain knowledge that the weather forecast is correct, and you are guaranteed to get the perfect light for the shot you have in mind.

Three hours later, you arrive at your destination, and the first thought that enters your head is “how do I blow up the Met Office” – how could they have lied to me so badly?

If you rely solely on ‘other folks images’ for what your shot should look like, then you now have a severe problem. Nature is railing against your preconceptions, and unless you make some mental modifications then you are deep into a punch-up with nature that you will never win.

Just such an occasion transpired for me the other day at Llyn Padarn in North Wales.

The forecast was for low level cloud with no wind, just perfect for a moody shot of the famous Lone Tree on the south shore of the lake.

So, arriving at the location to be greeted by this was a surprise to say the least:

image previsualization

This would have been disastrous for some, simply because the light does not comply with their initial expectations. I’ve seen many people get a ‘fit of the sulks’ when this happens, and they abandon the location without even getting out of the car.

Alternatively, there are folk who will get their gear set up and make an attempt, but their initial disappointment becomes a festering ‘mental block’, and they cannot see a way to turn this bad situation into something good.

But, here’s the thing – there is no such thing as a bad situation!

There are however, multiple BAD REACTIONS to a situation.

And every adverse reaction has its roots buried in either:

Rigid, inflexible preconceptions.
Poor understanding of photographic equipment and post-processing.

Or both!

On this occasion, I was expecting a rather heavy, flat-ish light scenario; but was greeted by the exact opposite.

But instead of getting ‘stroppy about it’, experience and knowledge allow me to change my expectation, and come up with a new ‘finished image previsualization’ on the fly so to speak.

image previsualization

Instead of the futility of trying to produce my original idea – which would never work out – I simply change my image previsualization, based on what’s in front of me.

It’s then up to me to identify what I need to do in order to bring this new idea to fruition.

The capture workflow for both ‘anticipated’ and ‘reality’ would involve bracketing due to excessive subject brightness range, but there the similarity ends.

The ‘anticipated’ capture workflow would only require perhaps 3 or 4 shots – one for the highlights, and the rest for the mid tones and shadow detail.

But the ‘reality’ capture workflow is very different. The scene has massive contrast and the image looks like crap BECAUSE of that excessive contrast. Exposing for the brightest highlights gives us a very dark image:

image previsualization

But I know that the contrast can be reduced in post to give me this:

image previsualization

So, while I’m shooting I can previz in my head what the image I’ve shot will look like in post.

This then allows me to capture the basic bracket of shots to capture all my shadow and mid tone detail.

If you watch the video, you’ll see that I only use TWO shots from the bracket sequence to produce the basic exposure blend – and they are basically 5 stops apart. The other shots I use are just for patching blown highlights.

Because the clouds are moving, the sun is in and out like a yo-yo. Obviously, when it’s fully uncovered, it will flare across the lens. But when it is partially to fully covered, I’m doing shot after shot to try and get the best exposures of the reflected highlights in the water.

By shooting through a polarizer AND a 6 stop ND, I’m getting relatively smooth water in all these shots – with the added bonus of blurring out the damn canoeists!

And it’s the ‘washed out colour, low contrast previsualization’ of the finished image that is driving me to take all the shots – I’m gathering enough pixel data to enable me to create the finished image without too much effort in Lightroom or Photoshop.

Anyway, go and watch the video as it will give you a much better idea of what I’m talking about!

But remember, always take your time and try reappraise what’s in front of you when the lighting conditions differ from what you were expecting. You will often be amazed at the awesome images you can ‘pull’ from what ostensibly appears to be a right-off situation.

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