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

Members Image Processing

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Members Image Processing – Members Only Content

In this 30 minute video I take you step-by-step through my processing of one of my members raw files.

This shot was taken by member Phil Ellard and is of the famous landmark of South Stack Light on Holy Island, Anglesey in North Wales.

Phil slightly over-exposed the highlights in this shot, and even though we can’t recover them in Lightroom we can bring them 99.9% back in line with the highlight reconstruction feature inside Raw Therapee.

Once that is done it’s a simple question of building visual depth into the image using some very simple techniques inside Photoshop and a final polish back in Lightroom.

The one KEY MESSAGE I want you to take from this is that I’m using THREE separate applications:

Raw Therapee

Photoshop

Lightroom

and all three have something they can bring to the table!

You can only watch the video by clicking the image above, or this link https://www.patreon.com/posts/members-photo-21106877 and becoming a member.

Nikon Z System Thoughts

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Nikon Z System Thoughts

Nikon Z

Looking to buy into this new system from Nikon?

My advice is simple – save your money, because the Nikon Z system appears to have ONE MASSIVE Achilles Heel.

It’s only provisioning you with one – YES, 1 – media slot.

That means you have ZERO storage media redundancy.

It doesn’t matter how quiet the new Nikon Z system Silent Shooting is, if you shoot a wedding on one of these cameras then you had better be carrying some hefty Liability insurance.

Do a corporate shoot and then try explaining why you need to do a re-shoot – you’ll never get your bill paid or work for them again!

I haven’t shot without backup ONCE since I bought my Nikon D3 11 years ago.

Leaving the photographer open to the vagaries of card failure without recourse to a redundant backup is the single biggest fubar any camera manufacturer can make.

And in this day and age it’s one that’s pretty much unforgivable in my opinion, especially when the purchase price of the Nikon Z cameras is so high.

The Sony fan club must be having a field-day with this.

For those of us who know what we’re talking about and are used to the way Nikon operate, it’ll be obvious that the Nikon Z cameras will be upgraded before too long.

And I’d bet that one feature of the upgraded models will be twin media slots!

Storage media doesn’t fail very often any more, but shooting to a single card is still a massive risk – one Nikon is in fact forcing upon you.

Nikon Z System Fallacy

Popular YouTubers like that idiot from Philadelphia have today stated that the wider 55mm Nikon Z mount lets in more light than the traditional 46.5mm F mount, and he goes on to quote Nikon as saying it lets in 100% more light.

Let’s get one thing straight – it doesn’t and they didn’t!

The amount of light falling on the 36×24 sensor stays exactly the same.

If you look at a scene through a 4 foot square window, then switch to an 8 foot square window onto the same scene does the light from the scene go up? No of course it bloody doesn’t!

What the 55mm Nikon Z mount does is give Nikon lens designers the ability to make lenses with WIDER internals – wider aperture holes/f-numbers.

So we can now design a lens with an aperture of f0.9 or f1.0 as opposed to f1.4 – which will indeed ‘transmit’ 100% or more light – f1.0 is 1 whole stop wider than f1.4.

But bare in mind that we are talking f-numbers here, and they actually have no true correlation with the real light output of a lens – for that we need T-stop values, and nobody’s mentioning those!

In Conclusion

It’s your money guys ‘n gals, so if you want to buy one then please feel free!

But just make sure you are aware of THE FACTS and are not being sold on THE HYPE.

Mirrorless cameras have a lot going for them – one would certainly agree with me when it comes to astro landscape photography that’s for sure.

But if I could afford to buy one just for astro then I wouldn’t touch one of these with a 10 foot pole – I’d be off down the Sony shop for sure!..and I can’t believe I just said that!

And that’s simply because of NO MEDIA BACKUP – WTF were Nikon thinking??

Z7 or D850? D850 all day long – after all it’s got two card slots!

Lightroom Classic CC Update 7.5

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Lightroom Classic CC Update 7.5 – August 22nd 2018

lightroom update 7.5

This morning I updated Lightroom Classic CC to the latest version 7.5.

And likewise I suggest you all do the same thing.

It’s not very often you hear or see me being very positive about Lightroom, but this latest iteration has me impressed for sure.

There has been the usual added camera support, together with some fangled update to the book module with some new Blurb templates – but that’s all inconsequential in my eyes and just so much froofroo.

No, the big improvement on all 3 of my machines here is one of SPEED.

And in particular, large catalogue load-speed.

I have one particular catalogue that sits on a raided pair of hard drives, and it contains just under 70,000 images.

This catalogue normally takes quite some time to open fully and it’s something of a torture-test for Lightroom.

But as of this mornings update not any more it would seem – the catalogue opened and all 69,865 previews were in place in under 10 seconds.

So would I recommend you install this latest update?

You betcha I would….always bearing in mind that Lightroom is notorious for varied performance on different individual systems – so I accept ZERO, NIL, NADA, нуль responsibility!

One negative thing that DID occur twice, but I couldn’t replicate in the video nor since – the infamous PANEL BLACKOUT.

They usually occur in the Develop module and your left and right panels just ‘black out’, and all you can see is your image.

If you do suffer a panel blackout though, don’t panic!

Just hit the G key to take you back to the Library Grid View then hit the D key to go back to the Develop module – you should get your panels back immediately.

I’ll keep you updated if I find any problems over the next few days and weeks, and if you have any problems just let me know.

Here’s the video on YouTube:

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.

Image Data Storage and Backup

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Image Data Storage and Backup

Image Data Storage and Backup

It’s a sad fact of life but here’s the news:

Your computer System disc is ‘doomed to failure’ at some point in time simply because it has to work VERY HARD.

Desktop machines can be fitted with more than 1 internal drive, but laptops and ‘all-in-ones’ like the iMac can usually only use one internal drive.

Non-system, or external drives work A LOT LESS and so make for a more secure home for your precious original camera files.

So when it comes to Image Data Storage and Backup, the first thing I would advise is that these external drives are where our image files MUST live.

Applications such as Lightroom ‘live’ on your system drive – they have to.

With regard to Lightroom your next most valuable commodity is your CATALOGUE because of all the valuable processing & IPTC data it contains.

By default this is stored on your SYSTEM drive – usually in ‘PICTURES or My Pictures’ – and so from an Image Data Storage and Backup perspective it is actually in the worst place possible!

Your Lightroom catalogue comprises 3 files:

The actual .lrcat file itself
The catalogue previews.lrdata file
The catalogue smart previews.lrdata file

Note: Lightroom will NOT function unless all 3 of these files are in the same place!

Personally I never use 3 – smart previews – do I Mr. Stott (private wise-crack)! But the file still needs to be there for Lightroom to function.

The .lrcat file, considering the information it carries, isn’t really all that large. But the accompanying previews.lrdata file can get MASSIVE!

You will see all sorts of crap talked about catalogue location on the internet – mainly about the speed benefits of locating it on your fastest drive. The fastest drive on most machines is commonly the system drive – especially when computers have SSD drives fitted.

But not only is this the most vulnerable location for the main .lrcat file, the system drive is now open to being swamped by the size of the previews.lrdata file – resulting in your system speed decreasing because applications have not got enough free disk space in order to function correctly.

So catalogue location is always a trade-off in some way or other, but if you take my advice keep your catalogue (or catalogues) well away from your system drive.

Image Data Storage and Backup – Simple Image Data Storage and Backup Using Lightroom Import.

Image Data Storage and Backup

In the simple setup above, I have two identical hard drives plugged into the MacBook Pro and I’m using drive A for working storage and drive B as a backup. My Lightroom catalogue is on drive A.

This is my standard setup for workshops, overseas trips etc.

I use the Import Dialogue in Lightroom to import the images to the A drive, and thus into my catalogue.

I COULD also select the option (see blow) to make simultaneous backups of the image files onto drive B:

However, this means that my A drive contains my catalogue, image previews, raw files, .xmp files and image adjustments, and any tiffs or jpegs I make from the raw files. But the B drive just contains copies of the raw files and nothing else.

There is nothing wrong with working like this – after all the most important thing is to get those raw files backed up, and this method of working achieves that goal very well.

I could elect to backup the catalogue to the B drive too, but any tiff or jpeg files I made – though indexed in the backup catalogue – would only exist on the A drive unless I copied them over to the B drive manually.

Image Data Storage and Backup – “A Slightly Better Mouse Trap”?

The way I work is a bit different, and instead of duplicating the raw files to the B drive on import, I CLONE drive A to drive B.

Cloning the A drive to the B drive ensures that ALL the contents of the A drive – and I mean everything – is safely duplicated and backed up to the backup B drive.

Because I work on the Mac system I use Carbon Copy Cloner, and most Windows users I know use Acronis True Image to achieve the same goal.

So, working with this simple system let’s go through the process:

1. Import images from our camera media to the Lightroom catalogue by putting the images on the A drive.

2. Work inside the catalogue – deleting non-keepers, adding meta data, processing etc.

3. When finished working, drive A contains all the files we need/want to keep so the two drives look like this:

As you can see, drive B is empty, and drive A contains all my data.

4. Start our cloning application – in this case Carbon Copy Cloner:

5. Set the source drive (the disk you want to clone) and the destination (where you want the clone to live) in the task pane and start the operation by clicking the ‘clone’ button.

6. While the clone task is running, notice the wording – ‘Comparing files on source and destination’ – this is interesting. If we add more images and other data to the A drive later and run the task again in order to ‘update the clone’ CCC only adds files that are new together with files that have changed.

This means that new images are added, as are the changes to the Lightroom catalogue and previews, but it does NOT re-write unchanged files.

So the ‘cloning task’ runs much faster when you re-clone!

7. When the clone task is complete you can see that the file structure of the two disks is identical:

CCC creates (unless you tell it otherwise) a ‘Safety Net’ folder.

Say I’m working in the Lightroom catalogue and find a crappy image that I missed on my original ‘cull’. I can tell Lightroom to delete it from the disk and thus from the catalogue. But it will still be on the clone image/B drive, and registered within the clone of the catalogue.

So when I run the clone task again the catalogue clone is modified to register the removal of the image, but the actual image file is not deleted from the B drive – instead it gets moved to the ‘Safety Net’ folder (just in case I’ve been an idiot!).

Put simply, I can delete files (or even folders) from the A drive, but they will not be deleted from the B drive but moved to the ‘Safety Net’ folder on the next clone operation.

Good ehh?

Image Data Storage and Backup – Hard Drives and Connections

A vexatious subject for sure, and it all comes down to money!

With the laptop setup at the start of this article, the two hard disks I’m using are 500Gb G-Drives in Thunderbolt carts.

These are fast drives on very fast connections, and I do not notice any speed reduction in catalogue functionality.

I can also swap the drives from Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 carts and plug them directly into the USB 3.0 ports on my Mac Pro (which is basically a modified 2009 machine which won’t accept Thunderbolt bus connections).

For me, USB 3.0 bus speeds are plenty fast enough too, so plugging that A drive into my Mac Pro and opening the Lightroom catalogue I created in Norway on a MacBookPro gives me pretty much the same performance in my office as I had on location.

I can now import the catalogue and files onto my main office machine, and either keep it as a stand-alone catalogue, or merge it with an existing one:

Image Data Storage and Backup – To Raid or not to Raid?

Desktop computers have space in them for the addition of more hard drives – I have 6 in mine:

My system disc, which is a 500Gb SSD
3 TB storage
3 TB storage
1TB partitioned into two 500Gb drives – 500Gb for Photoshop Scratch purposes and 500 Gb bootable system disc backup done with CCC.

Discs 5 & 6 are a RAID 0 pair of 4TB WD Blacks, so they basically behave like an 8TB disc.

So what is RAID, and why use it?

Redundant Array of Independent Disks – RAID – in it’s simplest everyday form comes in two flavours – RAID 0 and RAID 1.

If we take two identical drives we can use our operating system drive management and built-in RAID controllers to configure the two drives to work simultaneously in either a 0 or 1 configuration.

RAID 1, from an Image Data Storage and Backup perspective, is a Godsend because as you write a file to one drive it is mirrored onto the other drive in the RAID pair – in other words INSTANT backup without you having to lift so much as a finger!

RAID 0, from an Image Data Storage and Backup perspective is quite the opposite. As you write a file to a RAID 0 pair that file is broken into blocks, and half the blocks are written to one drive, the other half to the other drive.

Advantage of RAID 0 – both drives are written at the same time, so the write speed is in effect twice as fast as RAID 1.

Disadvantage of RAID 0 – lose 1 of the two drives and ALL data is lost – ooops!

The speed gain is why I use this 8TB RAID 0 two drive array, but only because I have it mirrored onto an external 8TB G-Drive 2-bay unit configured in RAID 0 as a permanent backup.

See – I told you money was involved! Don’t waste your cash on new cameras – spend it all on quality glass and hard drives. You can never have enough of the latter, and the former is what improves the quality of your images.

And that’s not all – I have two 2TB Seagate expansion drives sitting on top of my desktop machine – both on USB 3.0, one operates as my Mac Time Machine backup drive, and the other is the capture, edit and project storage drive for Camtasia which I use for all my training and YouTube videos.

Now obviously you won’t need anything like the volume of storage I have, and I would certainly not recommend you use RAID 0 pairs of drives either.

But for effective image data storage and backup it is both safer and kinder to your overall system speed to keep both your images and your Lightroom catalogue on a drive or drives that are separate from the drive your applications run on.

Footnote: You’ll come across people on the internet/YouTube who will lead you to believe that they back their images up to ‘the Cloud’.

Consider someone who comes back from Norway after a week on the eagles with ‘yours-truly’ they have been shooting, culling and editing over there and they still might come back with 4000 raw files. How do you back those up to the cloud?

Let’s now say we cull 90% of those raws, and end up with 400. Let’s now take the best 25% of those and create archival tiff files for print – that’s over 6Gb of files from your average FX camera. Let’s also take 50% of those 400 shots and make some stock submission full resolution jpegs that may average 5MB each.

So from just that 5 days of shooting we end up with 14GB of raw files, 6.5GB of archive images and over 1GB of jpegs – 21.5GB in all for 5 days shooting.

How long is it going to take to upload 20GB+ over your average internet connection?

If you are a shooter of any kind of volume then Cloud backup is not a viable option in my opinion, because it’s your raw and archive images that are critical, not the jpegs!

Latest YouTube Video:

In case you missed it I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel the other day, processing a low key Barn Owl image in Lightroom and Photoshop and using the Lumenzia plugin to do some very simple but effective localised adjustments.

Overall, the image would be 100% IMPOSSIBLE to create in just Lightroom.

If you found this free content useful and would like to see more plus extras not viewable to the general public then please consider joining my existing patrons over on my Patreon page by clicking the link below.

Many thanks!

Lumenzia – Update 2nd July 2018

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Andrew Astbury

Lumenzia and Basics – Update 2nd July 2018

lumenzia

Greg Benz has just issued new updates for both the Lumenzia and Basics Photoshop plugins. So don’t forget to go and grab the updates for both.

I’ve included below a full list of all the updates for both Lumenzia and Basics.

If you haven’t got the plugin yet then I’d highly recommend that you do. Click HERE to get the very latest retail version.

If you have the plugin, but you haven’t invested in Gregs training course then you can buy that buy CLICKING HERE and selecting the option on the left.

Or for those who don’t have Lumenzia yet, you can save money by buying it bundled with Gregs own training course and learn from the man himself how to harness the power of Lumenzia – click HERE.and selecting the option on the right.

And YES, if you use the links above then Greg pays me a small commission.

Lumenzia v6.1.0 (released July 2, 2018) updates:

New: -click “Curves” for advanced options to create curves for each wide zone.
Updated: <cmd/ctrl>-click “Sat” or “Vib” in normal mode to immediately create a masked HSL layer. This can save a lot of time, as saturation/vibrance masks are most commonly used with HSL adjustments.
Updated: “Sat” and “Vib” are now available in LIVE-M mode.
Updated: “Sat” and “Vib” are now available in LIVE-S mode.
Updated: “?” can be used on all buttons at any time (including currently disabled options)
Updated: Shortened layer name used for BlendIf:under (the layer name will no longer include “under” in order to keep the name shorter. Layers for BlendIf:this will continue to get a longer name).
Updated: Improved warnings if the user tries to make invalid changes to the temporary orange/red layers.
Updated: Convert layers to linked PSB allows ( and ) in filename.
Updated: When selecting “vector mask” as a mask output, a more prominent warning is shown to alert the user not to use this option with luminosity selections (as conversion of these complex selections into vector masks is slow in Photoshop, and can even trigger a Photoshop bug that causes a crash in some cases). Vector masks are meant to be used with simpler selections, such as those created with the lasso tool.
Updated: High Pass Smart Object is created at higher strength.
Updated: Button reference switched to a 2-page format to make it easier to read.
Updated: JSXBIN installer makes desktop log files optional to avoids cluttering your desktop. If log files are needed, hold <alt/option> while clicking the “Install” button during installation (as noted in the button’s tooltip).
Fixed: PreBlend using “Blend Documents” with output set to “New Document” may create an output document in 8 bits instead of 16.
Fixed: PreBlend using “Blend Documents” with output set to “New Document” may create an output document with a different RGB color space.
Fixed: “If” visualization does not clear any other existing layer styles.
Fixed: Sharpen “protect edges” affects the filter mask, not layer mask, when working on a Smart Object.
Fixed: Sharpen using Smart Object creates two white masks.
Fixed: Sharpen Smart Object asks about all/selected layers when not needed.
Fixed: PreBlend fails to rename layer when using existing document as output
Fixed: Bug that prevents Lumenzia actions from showing as an option in the utilities menu.
Fixed: Bug where re-importing an external PSB may fail to align correctly under rare circumstances.
Fixed: “Traditional” masks fail to render on images with no color profile.
Fixed: Bug where PSB re-import fails to work on CS6.
Fixed: LIVE-M updates layer names as expected.
Fixed: A bug where CS6 would not remember last settings used for “Dodge”.
Fixed: PreBlend improperly renames base layer when using an existing output document other than the first choice in the list.
Fixed: Error message when choosing to use BlendIf with “Contrast”
Fixed: PreBlend may produce an error message in CS6 that prevents the ability to blend different documents.
Fixed: Allowing greater maximum panel width to account for certain display situations where the full panel width may not be visible.

Lumenzia Basics v6.1.0 update includes:

New: “<<” and “>>” buttons to cycle through blend modes. This allows you to cycle through and experiment with various blend modes for different effects (not all the blend modes, just the best ones for photography). And there are still discrete buttons for other blend modes you may want for other needs that don’t typically involve experimentation (such as “difference” blend mode for visually aligning layers manually).
Updated: “Fill” now allows feathering.
Updated: Hold <alt/option> when clicking “Show Mask” to see the mask as a color overlay on the image. (ie, this is like what you’ve always been able to do for visualizing BlendIf with the “If” button, but you can now do it with layer masks as well).
Updated: “Pass Through” is used instead of “Normal” blend mode for layer sets, as this is more likely the user intent.
Updated: <ctrl/cmd>-click “SmartObj” to export linked layers to PSB (i.e. Basics now has this same functionality as in the Lumenzia menu.)
Updated: “SmartObj” provides a more useful error message if the user attempts to convert a single adjustment layer to a Smart Object.
Updated: “RAW” and “Verticals” provide a more useful error message if the user accidentally tries to use them on an adjustment layer.
Fixed: “SmartObj” can now be used on a group.
Fixed: Deconvolution sharpen now works properly on CS6.
Fixed: “Verticals” fails to clear guides when requested
Fixed: CS6 Bug where opening Basics panel could affect certain aspects of Lumenzia until rebooting Photoshop.
Fixed: “RAW” displays an incorrect error message about locked layers.
Fixed: Bug where “SmartObj” extract may fail to align correctly under rare circumstances.
Fixed: Bug where “SmartObj” extract fails to work on CS6.
Fixed: Numerous tooltip fixes and updates.

If you want to ‘get into masking’ and find mask production and blending tedious then Lumenzia is a superb way to help you unlock the power of luminosity masking without the stress!

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!