Well I got up around 5am, took a look outside while the dog went out to plant land mines in the back yard and saw that the sky had cleared very well and the moon was shining brightly! So i quickly hustled my gear together and took of to the Garden. When I got to I25 & GOG Road the wind picked up. Actually it nearly blew my RAV 4 off the road!
I parked in my usual spot and saw two other cars pull in with other like minded photogs. I took of towards Rattlesnake Ridge and was pretty much push up the ridge with the wind gusting . i set my my gear and here's what I got.
Nice spotlight on the red rock - I like #3. The pics look a little dark and yellowish on my monitor, though.
Posted by Stan Rose on February 3, 2007 at 1:47 PM
I really like the stormy shots, esp #2--very foreboding! If you could somehow get a little more detail from the shadows in #1, it would help. Also, either lose the top of the tree or add some sky (if possible), its uncomfortable touching the top of the photo.
Posted by Joshua Hardin on February 3, 2007 at 2:22 PM
Yea, #2 then #3 get my vote as well. They also look a little dark on my monitor too, but I really dig those clouds rolling over the peak!
Posted by Rick Dunn on February 3, 2007 at 3:10 PM
Hmmmm...Dark Yellow Man returns, with his sidekick Dark Magenta Man (first pic). You posted one a while back that was tack on and gorgeous. The one posted at 11:36 (12:36) looks reasonable; the rest all look pretty funky. If you can pull up a colors histogram in PS, I'm sure you'll see that you've got a serious imbalance (in the photo, of course....)
Posted by Stan Rose on February 3, 2007 at 4:52 PM
If Rick means the one at 2:36, i agree, i really like that composition, too.
I sympathize with dark photos, cause I prefer to have dark compositions (you should see the book i self-published---daaark!) but I seriously recommend you take a look at your shots in several different monitors (go to the library, if need be) to see what others are saying. To some extent, you have to go with the flow (im slowly learning, though i'll still go dark when i can get away with it)
I can say with all certantyt that any Yellow cast on my images has nothing to do with color calibration. The light this morning in the Garden was yellow and magenta as it changed. My Screen is calibrated and the images you see were shot with Daylight balance and the ONLY editing I did in post production was to clean up any dust spots and to add my name to the image. The last two I went in and changed drastically. As for DARK, it was 100% intentional. I like dark and moody, if I lighten them you end up with blown out areas where snow is showing. I agree with some of the crop remarks and wish I had put in more sky than foreground.
So Mr Dark, Yellow and Magenta shot the colors that were there and did not change any white or color balance. BTW I checked my Screen calibration with my GretaMacBeth PanTone Huey and it was correct.
Posted by Todd Caudle on February 3, 2007 at 5:29 PM
James, there's definitely something going on with your calibration process when everyone notices your images are dark, and many discern a color cast. There's dark and moody, and there's dark. These are dark.
One of the knocks on Velvia film was always how bad it looked when you underexposed it, as opposed to traditional Ektachrome shots that just looked more pleasingly saturated. Your shots look like underexposed Velvia. (I know they're digital, this is just for example.)
I would also counsel you to not get so locked in to the same spot. Anybody can have a favorite photo location, but so many of your recent excursions that you've shared with us have been from this same exact location. And it's a location that's pretty familiar to anyone who has shot in the Garden. Spread your wings, man.
Posted by Rick Dunn on February 3, 2007 at 6:03 PM
At the risk of beating a dead, dead, dead horse... here's a link to an image on your site that looks great: Good image.
Now, I realize that the light is different at different times, but many of the images above look VERY strange. I know what those rocks look like in different types of light because I've shot there many times. Don't know what to tell you, James - if your calibration is good, then your eyes are playing tricks on you and you're making adjustments that 'appear' to look natural, but that are quite a bit off....
Stan - in preferences, you can set the time zone to MST if you want times to appear in local time; your preferences may still be set at the default of Eastern Standard Time.
Posted by Rick Dunn on February 3, 2007 at 6:24 PM
The Good
Posted by Rick Dunn on February 3, 2007 at 6:24 PM
The Bad
Posted by Rick Dunn on February 3, 2007 at 6:25 PM
The Ugly
Posted by Rick Dunn on February 3, 2007 at 6:27 PM
Darren said it well - no one can tell you what you should like, but it seems that most people are finding these images to be "off". I think the historgrams are revealing....
Posted by James H Egbert on February 4, 2007 at 10:05 PM
Agreed, I need to look, but i wonder, if I didn't do anything to change color, how did it happen? Is it my White balance in-Camera? Is it the RAW conversion? Now I'm puzzled.
Posted by Brian Jackson on February 4, 2007 at 11:18 PM
Wow thanks for the cool example Rick. Pretty much would agree with what everyone else above said.
Brian
Posted by Todd Caudle on February 4, 2007 at 11:43 PM
Hey James, here's a test for you. This is a photo I posted over on ESS. When you look at it on your monitor, does it look really over-exposed, or just right? If it looks okay, then what we might be dealing with is just your personal preference for dark images. If it looks bright on your end, we're looking at an issue with your monitor calibration.
Posted by Grant Collier on February 5, 2007 at 12:15 AM
It looks like part of the problem might be with the RAW conversion. You may need to push the exposure slider farther to the right and not always push the shadows as much to get a more balanced histogram. You can also mess with the white balance in RAW conversion if the colors look off. In Photoshop, you can check the CMYK #'s in the info pallette on an area of the photo that is supposed to appear white. In general, the C, M, & Y #'s should be about the same or the C value can be a little higher than the others and Y a little lower.
Posted by Rick Dunn on February 5, 2007 at 10:01 AM
Getting color accurately displayed on an image that is so dark is going to be problematic. I think the first step is capturing and working with a good exposure. The histogram on numbers 2 & 3 shows that the exposure is way too low. I'm definitely not the most experienced/knoweldgeable in this area, but I'll try to articulate what I'd be doing/thinking if these were my images and histograms...and hopefully the more skilled folks will correct me where necessary.
Exposure: Forget about the monitor for a second - that's a variable that needs to be evaluated, but probably later in the process; you first need to know if you're even starting with a workable image. If you look at the histogram of the RAW file on the camera, what does it show? If it shows something similar to these PS histograms - i.e., 2/3 of the scene is in the left half of the histogram - that says that you've underxposed the image significantly. You can adjust it up in the RAW converter, but why not start with a good file out of the camera? If you really like dark images, you can selectively darken the image later. But in histogram #2 (the "bad" histogram); there's practically no part of the image registering in the brighter 1/2 of the histogram; there's nothing in the brightest 1/4 - and that's just not natural for this scene, and it makes color balancing very challenging. As a guide, it's good practice to push the histogram as far right as you can without clipping it. You can always make adjustments later, but at least you're starting with a complete set of information/data.
Importing: When importing to the computer, now you need to figure out if your monitor is way off such that it's changing the way that the image appears to your eyes. Go to Scott Bacon's site and make sure that you can differentiate between the greyscale blocks. If any of the blocks other than Y and Z look black, you need to adjust your monitor. Once the monitor is adjusted, recalibrate; you can then have greater confidence that your adjustments to exposure and color are having the intended effect, and that other viewers will see what you see.
Color Adjustments: Now that you should have a good exposure, and now that it should be displayed reasonably accurately on your monitor, you can more effectively judge color and tone. This is the most subjective part and difficult to assist with. Of the three images I posted above, it looks like the first one and the other two were processed by two different people. They are that different; moreso than can be attributed to different lighting conditions. You indicated earlier that you didn't make any color adjustments to the original images. If your WB setting is suspect, put it in auto. Daylight balance (your setting) may not be appropriate for sunrise/sunset. Generally, auto does a decent job of getting close, and then you can make WB or color temp adjustments during import. In the third histogram above, it looks like you adjusted the red and magenta significantly. If you say you didn't, then you didn't, but that's what I'd expect to see if you started with an underexposed image, went into PS, selected color balance, selected midtones, and adjusted the red and magenta to compensate for a cool feel caused by underexposure. To my poorly trained eye, that looks like a manual shift in the red and magenta; not at all natural. The question is how it happened. If your camera or RAW conversion added that much magenta and red, there are problems somewhere in the camera or conversion process. If so, taking steps to improve in-camera exposure and confirm your monitor settings will eliminate several problems, and hopefully make it easier to identify other lurking variables that are causing the color shifts.
Your image looks fine, however It is a little bright for my taste, the colors are all spot on however, which tells me it's not my monitor, rather just a taste and exposure issue with my shooting and more likely the RAW Conversion, which i will be looking more deeply into tonight.
Discussion
23 repliesI parked in my usual spot and saw two other cars pull in with other like minded photogs. I took of towards Rattlesnake Ridge and was pretty much push up the ridge with the wind gusting . i set my my gear and here's what I got.
I sympathize with dark photos, cause I prefer to have dark compositions (you should see the book i self-published---daaark!) but I seriously recommend you take a look at your shots in several different monitors (go to the library, if need be) to see what others are saying. To some extent, you have to go with the flow (im slowly learning, though i'll still go dark when i can get away with it)
So Mr Dark, Yellow and Magenta shot the colors that were there and did not change any white or color balance. BTW I checked my Screen calibration with my GretaMacBeth PanTone Huey and it was correct.
One of the knocks on Velvia film was always how bad it looked when you underexposed it, as opposed to traditional Ektachrome shots that just looked more pleasingly saturated. Your shots look like underexposed Velvia. (I know they're digital, this is just for example.)
I would also counsel you to not get so locked in to the same spot. Anybody can have a favorite photo location, but so many of your recent excursions that you've shared with us have been from this same exact location. And it's a location that's pretty familiar to anyone who has shot in the Garden. Spread your wings, man.
Now, I realize that the light is different at different times, but many of the images above look VERY strange. I know what those rocks look like in different types of light because I've shot there many times. Don't know what to tell you, James - if your calibration is good, then your eyes are playing tricks on you and you're making adjustments that 'appear' to look natural, but that are quite a bit off....
Stan - in preferences, you can set the time zone to MST if you want times to appear in local time; your preferences may still be set at the default of Eastern Standard Time.
Brian
Exposure: Forget about the monitor for a second - that's a variable that needs to be evaluated, but probably later in the process; you first need to know if you're even starting with a workable image. If you look at the histogram of the RAW file on the camera, what does it show? If it shows something similar to these PS histograms - i.e., 2/3 of the scene is in the left half of the histogram - that says that you've underxposed the image significantly. You can adjust it up in the RAW converter, but why not start with a good file out of the camera? If you really like dark images, you can selectively darken the image later. But in histogram #2 (the "bad" histogram); there's practically no part of the image registering in the brighter 1/2 of the histogram; there's nothing in the brightest 1/4 - and that's just not natural for this scene, and it makes color balancing very challenging. As a guide, it's good practice to push the histogram as far right as you can without clipping it. You can always make adjustments later, but at least you're starting with a complete set of information/data.
Importing: When importing to the computer, now you need to figure out if your monitor is way off such that it's changing the way that the image appears to your eyes. Go to Scott Bacon's site and make sure that you can differentiate between the greyscale blocks. If any of the blocks other than Y and Z look black, you need to adjust your monitor. Once the monitor is adjusted, recalibrate; you can then have greater confidence that your adjustments to exposure and color are having the intended effect, and that other viewers will see what you see.
Color Adjustments: Now that you should have a good exposure, and now that it should be displayed reasonably accurately on your monitor, you can more effectively judge color and tone. This is the most subjective part and difficult to assist with. Of the three images I posted above, it looks like the first one and the other two were processed by two different people. They are that different; moreso than can be attributed to different lighting conditions. You indicated earlier that you didn't make any color adjustments to the original images. If your WB setting is suspect, put it in auto. Daylight balance (your setting) may not be appropriate for sunrise/sunset. Generally, auto does a decent job of getting close, and then you can make WB or color temp adjustments during import. In the third histogram above, it looks like you adjusted the red and magenta significantly. If you say you didn't, then you didn't, but that's what I'd expect to see if you started with an underexposed image, went into PS, selected color balance, selected midtones, and adjusted the red and magenta to compensate for a cool feel caused by underexposure. To my poorly trained eye, that looks like a manual shift in the red and magenta; not at all natural. The question is how it happened. If your camera or RAW conversion added that much magenta and red, there are problems somewhere in the camera or conversion process. If so, taking steps to improve in-camera exposure and confirm your monitor settings will eliminate several problems, and hopefully make it easier to identify other lurking variables that are causing the color shifts.
Your image looks fine, however It is a little bright for my taste, the colors are all spot on however, which tells me it's not my monitor, rather just a taste and exposure issue with my shooting and more likely the RAW Conversion, which i will be looking more deeply into tonight.