ESFotoClix Blog

Have you ever stood before a gorgeous landscape and wondered whether you should even take the photo because haze is concealing far away detail and creating a scene with very low contrast? I was faced with such a situation this last summer in King’s Canyon National Park, where heavy smoke from a nearby fire was killing many of the shots I wanted to take. Fortunately, I took this shot anyway.

As you can see, haze from the smoke is creating a very flat image, and this pretty much remains the case, even after applying one of my favorite curves.

Next, I applied a technique that I’ve found useful in adding contrast in my B&W conversions. I duplicated the image into another layer, and set the top (foreground) layer to multiply mode. Usually I reduce the multiplication effect by lowering opacity on the top layer to 30-50%, but in this case, I left it at 100%. Where did the haze go?

As you can see, the image has a lot more pop than the original. This is how I wanted it to look when I first pressed the shutter, and here it is, after some fairly simple post processing — something the camera couldn’t do, by the way. With this version in hand, I wondered whether a B&W conversion would work for this subject. Since now I have nice delineation of forms and good shadow and light contrasts, it has potential. After some channel mixing, the following version results.

This version is okay, but it is a little flat for my taste. Repeating the layer multiplication trick, this time with 60% opacity, a version with a little more pop and none of the original haze results.

I’m not sure this is exactly where I want to go with these images, but at the outset, this technique seems very promising for improving contrast and, in this case, removing that pesky haze. Give it a try and see what results you get for your so-so, flat images.

A few months ago I conjectured about the likelihood of a D90s coming out in 2010. As time has passed both my excitement for that possibility and my belief it will materialize have taken a nose dive. But as PMA approaches next month, rumors of new full frame (FX) Nikon offerings are swirling about.

Will the D700 receive a D700s refresh with the D3S? Maybe, but seeing that the D3s hasn’t been out long and few have had a chance to get it due to low availability, it would seem wise for Nikon to wait until fall 2010 for a D700 update. Will a D700 successor (a D900?) featuring either the D3X 24 megapixel sensor or an in-between 18 megapixel, hitherto unreleased sensor? This sounds more plausible, though either option presents Nikon with some self-made threats against its higher end models.

Whether a D700s or a D900 is about to hit the market, there is another rumor that truly excites me. A full frame (FX) sensor trapped in a D90’s body. For now let’s call it the D7000. Whether this is what Nikon is up to or not, making such a move would be a game changer. Even if this sensor were a mere 12 megapixels, say the same sensor the D3 and D700 feature today, the move would be genius. Yes, Canon can push up the megapixels and 1080p movie features, and Nikon would still be releasing a revolutionary, first-time-ever FX sensor in a small body model that regardless of megapixel count, would rock the competition. Why? Because many of us have been for some time surmising that except for few applications, we’d rather have clean, noise-free images than highly detailed ones. We’ve been realizing that even for the normal to large (up to 16×20) prints we make, the overhead and image quality compromises of higher megapixel images are practically useless to us.

The trick for Nikon with a D7000 offering would be pricing. Price it too low, and the top-end of the DX line (D300s) is in jeopardy. Price it too high, and sales potential would not justify yet another model, not to mention the danger to the D700 itself if its smaller cousin is too closely priced. A price somewhere between $1,900-2,000USD might do the trick, but differentiation would still be tenuous. Nikon would likely solve this by de-featuring the D7000: 11-point AF, now standard for the D3000, D5000 and D90 would be one easy way to protect the D300s and the D700. Lack of other pro features such as weather sealing, and going with the outer ergonomics of a D90 rather than the one-button-for-anything-you-want approach of the D300 and D700 might provide two useful differentiators.

There would be one other challenge for Nikon: lens availability for the FX format, as in affordable, practical lens availability. Most of us have the impression that FX means heavy and expensive lenses, and that would certainly defeat the advantage of a small, light FX body. Nikon could point out the few affordable FX lenses it offers, such as the 24-85 f/2.8-4 and 70-300 VR, but a better move would be to announce a couple of relatively low cost FX AFS lenses, including an affordable super wide and a kit lens that matches the long-in-the-tooth 24-85 f/2.8-4. Can Nikon manage to pull out a small FX body plus a couple of lenses out of its magical hat? I think so.

Does this sound exciting to you? It does to me. Whether Nikon does make such a move will reveal whether they are truly driven to produce cameras that turn out great images, or whether they will allow themselves to be pushed along by marketing’s megapixel quest.

Before this blog launched, I had the opportunity to visit Vasquez Rock Park, California. The following two images are the out-of-camera (OOC) and post-processed versions as I achieved them back then.

Out of camera (NEF-to-JPG converted in ViewNX): click for larger image

Post-processed with single image pseudo-HDR technique: click for larger image

After spending a holiday with Ansel Adams, I decided to revisit this photo with the things I learned from the master (detailed in ref1 and ref2). Before anyone reports me to a mental health specialist, that last sentence (and the title) are figurative: I did not physically return to Vasquez Rock Park, and Ansel Adams was with me only in spirit.

My first inclination was to try a B&W conversion, giving myself full freedom to exploit features in this image, namely form, texture, as well as shadow vs. light contrasts, that should be well-suited to a solid B&W final image. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to use an orange filter to get a richer set of dark gray tones in the sky, but unfortunately, given the coloration in the rock, that would render the foreground in very high key tones that would diminish and in some places eliminate texture and shadow vs. light detail. To address this, I tackled the sky and rock in separate layers. With the sky separated (masked) from the rock, I also went ahead and darkened the blues and added some saturation and hue. Application of an orange filter revealed some noise in the sky, but since it was now isolated in it’s own layer, it was easy to apply noise reduction and some Gaussian blurring only there to improve smoothness. For the foreground rock, I chose a cyan filter to render the tones more as mid-grays to whites and thus accentuate texture and shadow vs. light details. Note that this also has the effect to render the rock as more “actual” (though not “real”), or in other words, to show it with tones one might more reasonably expect having seen the original color scene. The separate layers also allowed me to apply a bit of “Clarify” and Unmask sharp to the foreground layer only and avoid some of the haloeing and noise enhancement that can happen when one does this across the entire image. Put it altogether, and I think one can say the final product deviates from reality — certainly in the sky — and yet retains a connection or handle to the original scene so that the interpretation I chose still makes sense and rings “true.”

B&W Multilayer conversion: click for larger image

For full credit, I went ahead and processed the color version. This time I did not use the pseudo-HDR attempt in my original post-processing attempt. Rather, I used separate layers to spruce up the sky a bit from the OOC bland version with hue and saturation, and backed off brightness a tad to make for richer blue tones. On the rock layer I enhanced local contrast through curves and layer super-position (multiplication in this case) as previously explained in this blog (see ref3 and ref4). The result is a fairly rich image that pleases me a great deal more than my original attempt.

Color Multilayer conversion: click for larger image

It’s fair to say this image departs from “realism.” I would claim, however, that it achieves “actuality” by retaining a strong connection to reality. In this color version, for instance, the sky isn’t as “dramatic” as in the B&W version simply because it can’t be made so without causing us to question whether the image is “genuine.” In fact, the sky feels “real” because I took care to keep its color within reasonable limits. Additionally, the tones in the rock are richer, redder, but I would hope we haven’t fallen into the “make redder to make it better” trap Adams disdained. Even if Adams felt I reddened the rock too much, perhaps he would give me credit for achieving a less “garish” result than I generated in my original pseudo-HDR version. And he would most certainly rejoice at the latitude of control we can exercise in color image post-processing and B&W photos alike. At any rate, we can see how both the B&W and color versions here built upon the potential of the original image to achieve an artistic interpretation which, though retaining a connection to reality, departs from it as well to bring out those details we want to portray more effectively.

As I wind down this write-up, I also find it irresistible to point out that this is the type of result one can only achieve when willing to go beyond the OOC image. Even with superb customization of in-camera image settings, it would be nearly impossible to produce results comparable to the last two images — certainly not consistently for all situations. Perhaps this is why I haven’t seen a single Ansel Adams print that didn’t go through extensive dark room optimization to realize the master’s vision.