Is is the lens? Is it dynamic range? (Page 2): CPR, lens is clean. Dark blob areas 75 feet from lens. I know the dynamic range is too great, but just expected a wall of black and not...

AndyT Loc: Hampstead, New Hampshire

CPR, lens is clean. Dark blob areas 75 feet from lens. I know the dynamic range is too great, but just expected a wall of black and not globs.

RRS Loc: Not sure

AndyT wrote:

I don't think theres anything wrong with the monitor. The rest of the image looks fine. Here is another, cropped to show the problem area, and printed much lighter in Elements hoping to show up on the site.

Are all of these shots done through the window? The dynamic range just may be too much to handle the under exposure. I cam now see what you have been describing but I feel that it has all to how you exposed the shot. Just my thoughts.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

Well, it seems to me that you are well aware of what dynamic range is. I do not know what part of the clouds you metered, I am guessing you metered from the gray cloud although the bright parts of the cloud should be brighter with a good exposure. I hope you used spot metering for the measurement.
The camera has a limited dynamic range and it shows here. I do not know what do you mean by "blooming." My concept of blooming is a different one.
I downloaded the file and I worked a little bit with it using Photoshop 6 and I am posting the result for your information. You can see that I added brightness to the clouds while opening the shadow areas. I used a little bit of contrast to make the image pop better.

AndyT Loc: Hampstead, New Hampshire

camerapapi wrote:

Well, it seems to me that you are well aware of wh... (show quote)

Camerapapi nicely done. I'll be sending you more to work on. I guess I'll just chalk this up to being outside the dynamic range. Thanks

AndyT Loc: Hampstead, New Hampshire

RRS wrote:

Are all of these shots done through the window? The dynamic range just may be too much to handle the under exposure. I cam now see what you have been describing but I feel that it has all to how you exposed the shot. Just my thoughts.

I expected the bottom of the image to just be black as the dynamic range was as you said, too much to handle. I wasn't expecting green blobs that look like a Lava lamp. Now there's an old reference

RRS Loc: Not sure

AndyT wrote:

I expected the bottom of the image to just be black as the dynamic range was as you said, too much to handle. I wasn't expecting green blobs that look like a Lava lamp. Now there's an old reference

OMG, I know what you are talking about!

AndyT Loc: Hampstead, New Hampshire

RRS wrote:

OMG, I know what you are talking about!

🌋

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

AndyT wrote:

Well Gene, I think you may have solved my problem. Never thought about posterization. Why would the Fuji and the Nikon, both 8bit, sRGB and the same sensor size, deliver different results? A side by side showed less posterization on the Nikon.

Couldn't tell you unless you provide the model number of the Nikon and the settings you used for both.

kavner58 Loc: Portland, Oregon

May I suggest F11 or F13, longer exposure time ~ 1/100 or even 1/60s. You may get larger DOF, reduce your noise somewhat.
I do not see why you need 1/500s, nothing is moving fast in your scene, you picked to collect less light an possibly blur some of the foreground which you were interested in an it is fairly dark.
-AK

AndyT wrote:

So far I've been very pleased with my month old Fu... (show quote)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

AndyT wrote:

Well Gene, I think you may have solved my problem. Never thought about posterization. Why would the Fuji and the Nikon, both 8bit, sRGB and the same sensor size, deliver different results? A side by side showed less posterization on the Nikon.

I haven't shot jpeg in over 10 yrs, so I'd have to do a test - but my guess is that when you only have 8 bits to work with, there are things can simply cannot be adjusted without consequences. it's the reason I don't ever shoot jpegs - too frustrating to work with in post processing.

By way of example, here are a couple of shots with crazy wide dynamic range, before and after . . .

Single shot, exposed for highlights to ensure they weren't blown, adjusted in Lightroom and Photoshop. I used a D800 for these.

(Download)

fotoman150

See the artifacts in edges of the trees if you look real close. Chromatic abberation?

wapiti Loc: round rock, texas

chaman wrote:

I think you are looking too much into it. I dont see anything wrong with the image other than been underexposed. What you mean by "blooming"?

Charlie157 Loc: San Diego, CA

Doesn't look like noise. Noise looks like colored grain. Could it be fairies

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

AndyT wrote:

So far I've been very pleased with my month old Fu... (show quote)

Looks normal to me... I looked at all the images you posted. The "blooming" you seem to see may simply be sunlit foliage behind the foliage in the foreground, which is in shadow. If you have Lightroom, you can play around in ACR to see what it is, or use LR's tools to minimize the effect.

Test your camera thoroughly to see whether it has something on the sensor. Clean your lenses, front and back. Fingerprints can cause bad flare in sunset scenes.

dat2ra Loc: Sacramento

Interesting discussion. It looks like what CPR said, and the sensors just don't have enough color information to assign to pixels correctly, so it's guessing. You could take as HDR, or even stack as two exposures.