Posted by Barbara Graham on September 27, 2017 at 11:41 PM
I don't think this is good enough in reality, I don't know what you'll be able to see at this size, to post in the Landscape gallery, but sunrises and sunsets are something I asked about in 2010 and am still trying to figure out. I am asking any of you who will to tell me what to do differently. I will give you the specs below.
But first what you may not be able to see at this size is that there is no detail at all in the further row of trees. What was there was a whole lot of noise. I removed that, and it didn't take heavy noise removal to do it, but that whole area really is just a dark area. The closer trees are okay, I think. How do you shoot a sunrise when the sky is getting light but the ground is still very dark?
Adobe RAW removed any bright spots without a problem just by moving highlights down a bit and whites down a bit, so the settings were not too bad for that.
The specs were:
9/23/2017, 7:24:30 AM
Canon EOS 7D Mark II EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM +1.4x III and the focal length says 146mm. Does anyone know why the focal length says 146mm?
f/6.3, 1/5000, ISO 1250
Aperture Priority, Evaluative Metering
What should I change? Thank you!
Posted by Ed Williams on September 28, 2017 at 12:55 AM
Barbara, I was surprised by the focal length readings on my shots with the 1.4 X TC as well to start with. You most likely had your 100-400 at just a hair over 100 mm, which with the 1.4 X factor comes out to 140 mm, plus or minus a few mm's. Speaking of M & M's, yum, oh I digress.... Your sunset sky colors are very pleasant. The really bright linings are a bit tough to tame here. I like the tree line silhouette also. If you want to see detail in both, you might need to try either some graduated filters for the light over dark areas, or with a tri pod, try two or more settings for the bright vs. the dark areas and then blend them in processing. Don't ask me how to do it, those are just how some of the professionals are doing such amazing work on sunsets....
Posted by Paul DeCesare on September 28, 2017 at 2:52 AM
Barbara, to get detail in the shadows you either want to shoot a second exposure or try to double-process your RAW file, meaning opening it again and getting the shadows to look great (and letting the sky blow out). Then put the two together in layers and mask away until you get the two merged and balanced. You also might want to look at a utility like Photomatix (40% of the NPN members just cringed, lol) and use that to merge multiple exposures together so you get good detail in all areas. The problem is your amazing eye can see 14 stops of light (each stop up is twice the brightness), but most cameras and monitors and inkjet printers and everything else see about 5-6, so you really need multiple exposures to merge together. If you take multiple, use Photomatix top get decent results, then eventually look at hand blending course like Sean Bagshaw's and others.
OK, let's talk exposure: first let's fix your current image. You shot at f/6.3, 1/5000, ISO 1250 and the sky detail is pretty good, so that's one EV range we want to keep. BUT, to get the same exact exposure, you should set the camera to f/11 to get more depth of field in focus and ABSOLUTELY shoot at ISO 100. That's the native ISO for your camera and the cleanest image. 1250 is noisy on Canons (I know, I own and have owned several). Definitely set it at ISO 100 for landscapes and glue it there, lol. OK, that means we just cut 5½ stops of light from your exposure with the aperture and ISO changes. Therefore the shutter speed needs to be changed to compensate. 5½ stops down would be going from 1/5000 to 1/125 of a second exposure. Use your meter and histogram when shooting so you can shoot Manual. Forget Aperture priority, we use that for action, but landscapes need Manual TLC. BTW, you cannot shoot landscapes without a tripod because the shutter speeds will always be long being you are at ISO 100, always. And don't use ISO 50, on your camera that will make you lose one stop of dynamic range. You could push the aperture to f/13 but not much past that because your image will soften when you get near f/16. You can sharpen it later, but let's get the best pixel on that sensor as we can.
OK, knowing that your sky will look decent at F/11, ISO 100 at 1/125, I would take 5 exposures next time, with the other 4 being under and over exposed. Then thoise 5 images can give you what you need to make a great landscape. So if you could go back and do it again, you would shoot ISO 100, f/11, and take 5 exposures with these shutter speeds: 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250. The last one will be the darkest and give you better exposure of the highlights your said were an issue. The other exposures will open up the exposure and get you detail in the trees. NOTE: these aren't the shutter speeds for every landscape shot, these are only based on the one you took. To know which shutter speeds are the correct ones you'll need to look at your meter and histogram to determine that based on whatever the scene is going on before you.
Then you would have imported those images into Photomatix‌ ( https://www.hdrsoft.com/index.html ) or even HDR EFEX Pro from the old Nik Software package that is still free now that Google took it over ( https://www.google.com/nikcollection/ ). They will get rid of it soon, but that one is free, I'd do that one. Let the HDR software pack your exposures together for now... down the road you'll want to learn hand blending, but good results can be gotten with Photomatix or HDR Efex Pro. I used Photomatix on this one in 2011. The sun was massively bright that morning but it all got packed into a viewable image using HDR:
Hope this helps! It's at least a start, you can research all over the place for techniques on the webs of course.
Posted by Barbara Graham on September 28, 2017 at 6:48 PM
Paul, that is an amazingly beautiful sunrise photo.
Posted by Keith Bauer on September 28, 2017 at 7:40 PM
<div> Barbara</div>
<div>You got some great advice from Paul. I agree with all of it except the requirement to use manual exposure. Aperture priority can get you to exactly the same place if you understand the light and you understand how metering works. Use which ever one makes more sense to you.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> The other option you have for blending is to use light room's photo merge capability. I don't do a lot of HDR blending, but I've used the capability of light room on occasion. It is much easier and generates a DNG file as output that you can then do whatever processing you'd like to do in the develop module like any other RAW file.
Keith </div>
Posted by Barbara Graham on September 28, 2017 at 7:58 PM
Thanks, Keith!
Posted by Paul DeCesare on September 29, 2017 at 12:38 AM
Barbara, good point made by Keith: you only have to shoot manual if you are going to use the HDR software because the software algorithm works best with definite one-stop increments. If you are going to manually blend two images (or more) then it's not required. He also mentioned Lightroom having the capability so that's an option. I don't use LR, so I didn't mention it.
Posted by Keith Bauer on September 29, 2017 at 10:23 AM
Not to be a contrarian, but you do not have to shoot in manual to get 1 stop increments.
Shooting in Aperture priority mode on your Canon 7D Mark II you have 2 options.
One is to use Automatic Exposure Bracketing. You set the increment for how much different you want each exposure. You can set the number of exposures to either 2, 3, 5 or 7 in the menu system. Put the camera in continuous shooting. Using a cable release you press the shutter release and you'll get the desired number of exposures bracketed without ever touching the camera while it is working.
The other option is to just use Exposure Compensation. Take the first frame, turn the large dial on the back of your camera to the left to dial in negative exposure compensation to the desired level, turn to the right to dial in positive exposure compensation.
This option works fine, but you have to touch the camera during the process which may lead to small movements during the exposure process which is not desirable.
In either of these options since you would be shooting in Aperture priority mode, the camera would be changing the shutter speed which is the desired behavior since you don't want to blend images with different apertures due to DOF issues.
Discussion
7 repliesBut first what you may not be able to see at this size is that there is no detail at all in the further row of trees. What was there was a whole lot of noise. I removed that, and it didn't take heavy noise removal to do it, but that whole area really is just a dark area. The closer trees are okay, I think. How do you shoot a sunrise when the sky is getting light but the ground is still very dark?
Adobe RAW removed any bright spots without a problem just by moving highlights down a bit and whites down a bit, so the settings were not too bad for that.
The specs were:
9/23/2017, 7:24:30 AM
Canon EOS 7D Mark II EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM +1.4x III and the focal length says 146mm. Does anyone know why the focal length says 146mm?
f/6.3, 1/5000, ISO 1250
Aperture Priority, Evaluative Metering
What should I change? Thank you!
OK, let's talk exposure: first let's fix your current image. You shot at f/6.3, 1/5000, ISO 1250 and the sky detail is pretty good, so that's one EV range we want to keep. BUT, to get the same exact exposure, you should set the camera to f/11 to get more depth of field in focus and ABSOLUTELY shoot at ISO 100. That's the native ISO for your camera and the cleanest image. 1250 is noisy on Canons (I know, I own and have owned several). Definitely set it at ISO 100 for landscapes and glue it there, lol. OK, that means we just cut 5½ stops of light from your exposure with the aperture and ISO changes. Therefore the shutter speed needs to be changed to compensate. 5½ stops down would be going from 1/5000 to 1/125 of a second exposure. Use your meter and histogram when shooting so you can shoot Manual. Forget Aperture priority, we use that for action, but landscapes need Manual TLC. BTW, you cannot shoot landscapes without a tripod because the shutter speeds will always be long being you are at ISO 100, always. And don't use ISO 50, on your camera that will make you lose one stop of dynamic range. You could push the aperture to f/13 but not much past that because your image will soften when you get near f/16. You can sharpen it later, but let's get the best pixel on that sensor as we can.
OK, knowing that your sky will look decent at F/11, ISO 100 at 1/125, I would take 5 exposures next time, with the other 4 being under and over exposed. Then thoise 5 images can give you what you need to make a great landscape. So if you could go back and do it again, you would shoot ISO 100, f/11, and take 5 exposures with these shutter speeds: 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250. The last one will be the darkest and give you better exposure of the highlights your said were an issue. The other exposures will open up the exposure and get you detail in the trees. NOTE: these aren't the shutter speeds for every landscape shot, these are only based on the one you took. To know which shutter speeds are the correct ones you'll need to look at your meter and histogram to determine that based on whatever the scene is going on before you.
Then you would have imported those images into Photomatix‌ ( https://www.hdrsoft.com/index.html ) or even HDR EFEX Pro from the old Nik Software package that is still free now that Google took it over ( https://www.google.com/nikcollection/ ). They will get rid of it soon, but that one is free, I'd do that one. Let the HDR software pack your exposures together for now... down the road you'll want to learn hand blending, but good results can be gotten with Photomatix or HDR Efex Pro. I used Photomatix on this one in 2011. The sun was massively bright that morning but it all got packed into a viewable image using HDR:
https://www.viewbug.com/photo/1637590
Hope this helps! It's at least a start, you can research all over the place for techniques on the webs of course.
Keith </div>
Shooting in Aperture priority mode on your Canon 7D Mark II you have 2 options.
One is to use Automatic Exposure Bracketing. You set the increment for how much different you want each exposure. You can set the number of exposures to either 2, 3, 5 or 7 in the menu system. Put the camera in continuous shooting. Using a cable release you press the shutter release and you'll get the desired number of exposures bracketed without ever touching the camera while it is working.
The other option is to just use Exposure Compensation. Take the first frame, turn the large dial on the back of your camera to the left to dial in negative exposure compensation to the desired level, turn to the right to dial in positive exposure compensation.
This option works fine, but you have to touch the camera during the process which may lead to small movements during the exposure process which is not desirable.
In either of these options since you would be shooting in Aperture priority mode, the camera would be changing the shutter speed which is the desired behavior since you don't want to blend images with different apertures due to DOF issues.