On 3/29/2012 5:26 AM, Joel Wilcox wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012, at 06:38 PM, Ken Norton wrote:
>>> downsampling will too often blow some highlights
>> I suspect what happened is that during the editing process I moved the
>> highlights up a ways to get a little crisper of a look. Frankly, I
>> don't know what else to do in this case as the flowers really have no
>> texture or patterns that are missed.
Here, I must disagree. There are rib/vein and texture detail hiding up in the
compressed top highlights just short of
the clipped parts.
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/Others/AG/P3262021-zx.htm>
>> At least not any that the E-1 could capture.
Doh! I guess what I see in the alternate version is just my imagination.
>> It's part of my own style that is influenced by
>> shooting B&W where I like to top and tail my image's dynamic range.
I'm not buying it. Take a closer look at flower petals. Even when they are very
bright and seem at first glance to be
all one color, it's not true. The petals are full of small structures
apparently embedded in a matrix of different
material. These two different types of surface material almost always have
slightly different colors and surface
reflectance. Also, they aren't all the same height and surface shapes vary,
leading to a subtle surface texture.
To me you may let one of more channels blow, in which case there is often color
shift. Or, more subtly, compress them
right up near the top. Then the color looks right, but the surface becomes an
undifferentiated surface.
I don't know about others, but to me that is like those portrait "skin
correction" apps, smooth, plasticy and unnatural
looking.
Take another close look at your pear blossoms and at Jim's pair of tulips.
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/Others/Nichols/Tulips_After_Rain.htm>
Surely you can see the added surface tonal differentiation and texture. To me,
that's part of what makes one image look
'good', 'natural', whatever and another not.
> As I see it, life is full of blown highlights. Photography needs a few to be
> somewhat realistic.
I agree - and yet ... Shoot raindrops in the sun, and you get clipped specular
highlights. That's what we see, too, so
there's not reason to try to 'correct' them. Do so, and the image looks
unnatural. On the other hand, I think actual
tonal/textural detail should be preserved where possible.
> I really agree on BW. In most cases BW without some speculars and all the
> whites toned down to printable values is a
> very dull photograph.
I'm not a big B&W guy, and I have to admit to making no B&W prints for maybe
millennia. ;-) My experience looking at
prints by the 'greats' is that they do often 'anchor' the highlights with a bit
of pure white, and do the same at the
other end. But few allow any large areas of subject matter that naturally
contain detail to go all white. Even
apparently undifferentiated skies are seldom anything but a light gray.
I've been looking at some very low detail paintings, even bought cards of a few
a few days ago. It's interesting how the
painters often 'add' color shade streaks/layers to clear skies. I was just
looking at one of early/late light. The top
part of the sky is actually a mix with lots of yellow in it. But looked at as a
whole it looks right. I think that may
be why so many printers of B&W and color images leave at least as much tonal
variety in the sky as was there, if not
enhance it.
If photographed, this scene would almost certainly have graduated darker near
the top, likely with vignetted corners.
Good painters know a lot more about light than most photographers, I think. It
doesn't hurt to see what they see.
> So why do we do that to color photographs? Joel W.
Perhaps because they are so different. B&W is already an abstraction from any
sort of realism for those with color
vision. Tonal detail has to work harder to define and present the subject than
where color is used. So further
manipulation of tonal detail to emphasize and deemphasize parts of the image
makes sense to a viewer's eyes.
Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
--
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