# Can I save this shot in PP?



## bjd (Sep 23, 2012)

Hi,
driving along early one morning and saw this shot, lots of low mist in the fields. I was hurried as where I parked was not ideal. Anyway I took some bracketed shots, from -2, -1.5, -1, -0.5 and +/-0. But, at F9.5, the sun is blown out in all five shots. I guess using F22 would have helped me. 
The -2 shot has loads of noise due to most of it being very under exposed. 
I thought about taking the darker parts from one of the better exposed versions to improve it. Anyone got any other ideas how to go about repairing this shot?

What about when shooting? I was using spot and trying to get the mist correct, which seems to have happened OK. I guess a grad ND would probably have helped too. 

Cheers Brian


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## zim (Sep 23, 2012)

Using RAW I'd have thought there is a good chance to recover this. Were you on a tripod though? this would determine how I would go about getting a good combined exposure.
If yes then I'd use photomatrix but as natural as possible
If no then I'd be using layer masks and careful editing

I'd also consider b&w which I think could allow you to turn the blown out sun to your advantage

good luck!


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## bjd (Sep 23, 2012)

Zim
well I thought about HDR, but as the Sun is blown out in the least exposed shot, I was assuming that
I'll not be able to recover anything. Therefore the idea to leave the sky as it is and take the best exposed 
land part of the shot.
Unfortunately not shot with a tripod.
Cheers Brian


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## preppyak (Sep 24, 2012)

I see the problem, your raw converter isn't in english! 

Yeah, this is probably the spot where a grad ND is the only thing that will really get the shot cleanly. You can look into luminance masks if you have Photoshop, as they would help you recover some highlights if they are blown out. You're definitely looking at combining multiple exposures though

http://imagingpro.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/expanding-the-dynamic-range-of-a-single-raw-file/


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## RLPhoto (Sep 24, 2012)

bjd said:


> Hi,
> driving along early one morning and saw this shot, lots of low mist in the fields. I was hurried as where I parked was not ideal. Anyway I took some bracketed shots, from -2, -1.5, -1, -0.5 and +/-0. But, at F9.5, the sun is blown out in all five shots. I guess using F22 would have helped me.
> The -2 shot has loads of noise due to most of it being very under exposed.
> I thought about taking the darker parts from one of the better exposed versions to improve it. Anyone got any other ideas how to go about repairing this shot?
> ...



Maybe, But it looks grim.


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## paul13walnut5 (Sep 24, 2012)

Aggressive Luma NR in the very underexposed shots.

Clean up noise as gently as you can in the better ones.

Save all as JPEG. Try Photomatix Pro. If you don't get very far with all in the mix, try just the brightest and darkest, then the brightest and 2nd darkest. etc.

Hard to judge how much you can save from just one shot.


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## AJ (Sep 24, 2012)

Nice shot. Worth spending some time on in PS.

How about: process the -2, -1 and 0 EV shots and put them in PS as layers. Auto-align in PS as if creating a pano. Blend manually, with a set of masks.


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## bjd (Sep 26, 2012)

preppyak said:


> I see the problem, your raw converter isn't in english!


Dang, wondered what I was doing wrong.........so it doesn't work then on English photos?



preppyak said:


> Yeah, this is probably the spot where a grad ND is the only thing that will really get the shot cleanly. You can look into luminance masks if you have Photoshop, as they would help you recover some highlights if they are blown out. You're definitely looking at combining multiple exposures though
> 
> http://imagingpro.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/expanding-the-dynamic-range-of-a-single-raw-file/


Thats a nice technique, I guess its also great for avoiding ghosting created by bracketed shots.
I tried it on another shot and it worked pretty well, I couldn't get the Blur part to work though. Plus the PS action link doesn't work for me at the moment.
Thats a great tip, thanks.

Cheers


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## EOBeav (Sep 26, 2012)

The sun is going to be blown out no matter what you do. It's a fairly bright light source.


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## bjd (Sep 27, 2012)

EOBeav said:


> The sun is going to be blown out no matter what you do. It's a fairly bright light source.


As that is true, even in the least exposed shot, any suggestions how I should have exposed the shot?
As stated I was on spot metering and aimed at the mist, and then bracketed around that value.

Thanks again to everyone that replied.

Cheers


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## bbasiaga (Sep 27, 2012)

What's wrong with just letting the sun be blown out? When you look at the sun with your eye (which you shouldn't do, so let's say when you look NEAR the sun with your eye) the pupil can't dial down enough anyway, so what you see is 'blown out'. 

You can HDR the rest of the image as you like and it'll look fine, IMO.

-Brian


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## bjd (Oct 6, 2012)

bbasiaga said:


> What's wrong with just letting the sun be blown out? When you look at the sun with your eye (which you shouldn't do, so let's say when you look NEAR the sun with your eye) the pupil can't dial down enough anyway, so what you see is 'blown out'.
> 
> You can HDR the rest of the image as you like and it'll look fine, IMO.
> 
> -Brian


Thanks for the answer, I finally got around to trying some options on this, and here is one of the results.
Sun is blown out, as nothing could be rescued there at all anyway. I guess I thought that shooting differently might have helped.

>>Mind you, the JPG looks terribly noisy, the TIFF seems to be OK.
Recreated the JPG directly out of PS instead of LR. I hope that looks better.
Cheers Brian


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