Lightroom 2 to the rescue
Sometimes there’s no alternative but to restore dynamic range using some manipulation at the processing stage. The Panasonic G1’s smallish sensor does not help in the dynamic range department – the Canon 5D’s, almost four times the area, is better in this regard.
The following is a case in point – I exposed for the brick wall, which is in bright sun, knowing the fire truck would be lost in gloom. Exposing for the fire truck would have burned out the wall and foreground.
After round-tripping the image from Lightroom 2 into PS CS2 to correct leaning verticals (Image->Transform) I saved back into Lightroom and used the Brush with AutoMask switched on to outline the garage bay, first hitting Option-O (this toggles mask visibility) to see exactly what I was masking. Then a quick tweak of exposure and an overall increase in red saturation and the picture was finished.
Here’s the ‘before’ and ‘after’ in Lightroom 2:
Shadow recovery – before and after
As the shape I was outlining had straight edges, I reduced the ‘feather’ setting to zero for a hard edged mask.
Fire truck. G1, 31mm.1/200, f/9, ISO 160
When God gives you lemons, make lemonade ….
Thomas,
I am fighting against highlight clipping, that means I wanted to use the histogram to avoid to much highlights-pixel. But I learned when underexposing that the yellow histogram is misleading in respect to highlights, as I posted here.
There I learned the trick for a correct histogram before taking a photo: Pressing the Preview and Display button.
As you show for high contrast it is easier to reduce expose by -2/3 and use the raw image.
Kind regards,
Helmut
I am a retired meteorologist (64 years old) and IT-developer for satellite image processing some years ago. So I like histograms and was rather disappointed that the yellow histogram is not correct.
Interesting comment, Helmut and your commentary on DPReview repays careful study.
For what it’s worth, I have switched off histogram display in the EVF, but for a different reason. It simply adds to the clutter and distraction and takes away from the picture making experience, at least for me. However, Panasonic hopefully can fix the errors through a firmware update for users who need the histogram.
My default of 2/3rd stop underexposure + RAW file format has yet to let me down. On overcast days when the contrast range is smaller, I reduce the underexposure setting to -1/3 or 0.