Hasselblad vs RED Epic for stills.

[Josh Beadle]

Heh... I shot a 5 frame bracket.

What?? Bracketed with how much total stop latitude? The shadows are starved for light and therefore noisy indicating under exposure so the bracketing was not deep enough.

I'm no film school grad . . . but simple me would have exposed for the highlights on one frame, then shoot a frame 3-6 stops brighter for the shadows and chairs and a third frame for perfect midtones. With the Phase preview check the histograms to confirm exposure coverage then mash together in post. Or, if you want to do all in single frame like a rockstar, get a ladder and ND film to cut the ceiling lights to have the entire scene meter within the known DR of the camera.

That all being said . . . no way this scene as originally shot exceeded 18 stops of total DR. Did it??

Edit: I understand now from rereading your #113 post that the image I corrected in post #136 is a single frame from your 5 frame bracket - not a HDR composite of those 5 frames. I'll bet with the top and bottom frames from that bracket set could be made awesome in LR4 as a composite. Point is - software is outpacing hardware at this point for creating amazing images. If you haven't upgraded to LR4 yet - do so soon. Amazing

[Les Dittert]

So no comments on the global color adjustment I did to get close to the final ?
Of course this is not the Epic vs phase one test , but anyways ....

Here is my coloring of the phase one original:full size jpeg here ( 32 meg ) : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61349012/les_cc0000.jpg

NOTES: I noticed different luminous lighting on chairs / back of chair.I did not do any ceiling retouch to remove fire sprinklers or smooth and desat. the tones in ceiling.I did no localized color correction at all.
small version :



The original from Christopher:

[Shane Betts]

Looks great Les. Lightroom? Nobody commented on mine either. You get that...

[Rob Ruffo]

It does look great Les.

[Esteban Sosnitsky]

Here is my coloring of the phase one original:full size jpeg here ( 32 meg ) : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61349012/les_cc0000.jpg

NOTES: I noticed different luminous lighting on chairs / back of chair.I did not do any ceiling retouch to remove fire sprinklers or smooth and desat. the tones in ceiling.I did no localized color correction at all.
small version :



The original from Christopher:

I opened the RAW IIQ file on Capture One and couldnt get a decent gradient between the clipped are near the red element on the ceiling. That impressed me as Capture One software used to have the best options for developing. Adobe camera RAW would open the files differently. The blue channel is totally clipped, impressed with your results.

[Christopher Barrett]

While I am actually amazed at all the information that LR could pull from the raws, the files really fall apart. Even at low res, the gradient in the ceiling starts to band. When you zoom in to the full size jpegs, the slanted wood wall shows a lot of weird tonal breakdowns and the shadows under the coffee table are full of noise. They look decent here on the forum, but the quality just isn't acceptable for my work. I'll be sticking to wide brackets with the still camera. The workflow I use is just as fast as the LR correction. I create an HDR image using the bracket in Photomatix and output a 16 bit tiff. Then I drop that on top of my Middle exposure that has a nice level of contrast through the majority of the scene. Use that layer to create a luminance mask for the HDR layer so that only the trouble spots (hilights) come through. This all takes about 2 minutes and provides a broad, contrast taming tonal range with excellent mid tone contrast and smooth transitions.

While the P65+ files have a whole lo of information in them, I've found in the past that you can only push them about 1 1/2 stops before they degrade. I know, I'm a total freak when it comes to image fidelity, and many of my clients would never see the shortcomings I've found in the single image approach, but knowing that the files have that much noise and banding in them (even if it's only apparent at 100%) would keep me up at night.

I've got some more files to show you guys as soon as I dig myself out from under the pile of work I've got in house right now.

CB

[Les C.]

So no comments on the global color adjustment I did to get close to the final ?
Of course this is not the Epic vs phase one test , but anyways ....

I thought your version looked fabulous - and would certainly like to know the steps you took!

[Josh Beadle]

While I am actually amazed at all the information that LR could pull from the raws, the files really fall apart. Even at low res, the gradient in the ceiling starts to band. When you zoom in to the full size jpegs, the slanted wood wall shows a lot of weird tonal breakdowns and the shadows under the coffee table are full of noise. They look decent here on the forum, but the quality just isn't acceptable for my work. I'll be sticking to wide brackets with the still camera. The workflow I use is just as fast as the LR correction. I create an HDR image using the bracket in Photomatix and output a 16 bit tiff. Then I drop that on top of my Middle exposure that has a nice level of contrast through the majority of the scene. Use that layer to create a luminance mask for the HDR layer so that only the trouble spots (hilights) come through. This all takes about 2 minutes and provides a broad, contrast taming tonal range with excellent mid tone contrast and smooth transitions.

While the P65+ files have a whole lo of information in them, I've found in the past that you can only push them about 1 1/2 stops before they degrade. I know, I'm a total freak when it comes to image fidelity, and many of my clients would never see the shortcomings I've found in the single image approach, but knowing that the files have that much noise and banding in them (even if it's only apparent at 100%) would keep me up at night.

I've got some more files to show you guys as soon as I dig myself out from under the pile of work I've got in house right now.

CB

I totally agree with your approach to extreme DR images. You still can't beat Photomatix and PS for creating nuanced HDR images. I use LR to RAW process then do the fine detail work in PS. Would love to attend a workshop you are instructing in the future that covers fine art architectural capture to print technique and workflow.

[Les Dittert]

I agree, multi exposure help the dark noise a bunch. In my still photography I do a lot of street photography of people, and I use Photomatix to get more punch out of the scene.
Obviously I can't use bracketed exposures on people ;)

In my color processing, I did no touchup, I could have flattened and smoothed the ceiling obviously.
I used ACR and fusion.

If that shot was from a Red camera, we would be seeing less detail in the darks. Way less. Red tends to smash out the dark detail, I believe as an effective measure to reduce 'unneeded' detail that most users won't miss much.
I invite readers to shoot the same image with the Red and a modern DSLR, process both from raw to a gamma boosted ( brightened ) image and look at what's happening in the dark regions. These are the regions that an HDR tone mapping would often bring up into more visible tones.
Hey, it's a movie camera, I'm OK with it. I do use HDR toning on Red footage in a mild way, and it works well. I could never have done any of that with an 8 bit camera !

Still from RED footage I shot below:

[Arnold F.]

Great job, Red Team! I love Hassy but also love my Scarley...don't have an Eppie yet. Use the Canny most of the time.