Best still photo settings

[Meta4]

They REENFORCE the reasoning for using RAW when wanting the most from your images.

Thanks .... but I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Chevyman]

If you're looking for something straight from the camera to post on social media just keep it simple. Used HDR in the photo settings.

 

[CanadaDrone]

How many eyes do the fish from that lake have?

Just kidding, cool photo.

 

[Robert Prior]

Shoot in raw (or raw+jpeg) to give yourself more latitude for post-processing if you need it. ISO as low as possible.

For post-processing I like Affinity Photo:

Affinity Photo – award-winning photo editing software

The only fully-loaded photo editor integrated across macOS, Windows and iPad, Affinity Photo is the first choice of millions of professionals around the world.

affinity.serif.com

Cheaper than Photoshop ($70 CDN to purchase, rather than $120/year to rent), has >90% of the functionality. Available for Mac/PC/iPad.

I've been shooting mostly spherical HDR panoramas: stitched in PTGUI, tone-mapped with Photomatix, and edited with Affinity Photo. I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm getting better:

Robert Prior

An avid amateur photographer, Robert Prior has been shooting 360° panoramas for years, and has recently expanded to aerial panoramas as well.

roundme.com

I've been inspired by Graeme Davidson, who does an excellent job with aerial spherical panoramas:

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[Topherdk]

Beautiful photo. Yes, that's my plan. I have just been looking at Adobe Lightroom for iOS, and I'm wondering if that may be a good mobile solution for basic editing in the field / coffee shop with my iPad...

I mainly use Lightroom and like it a lot. The Mobile App is good too. Definitely worth a free trial or a month of CC Membership.

 

[Bob4131]

Help - probably a post processing question? Just finishing lunch and stumbled on this post. I find many of my photos look flatter, dull, washed out ie not brilliant. I know this is a dumb question.....but any suggestions? I typically shoot landscapes in Auto with 5 shot AEB. I use the histrograph to "correctly" bracket my exposure setting. I take the RAW photos through Lightroom Classic to merge them. Then I use the color dropper tool to set color balance. I try playing with it but not happy with those results. Then I dehaze the photos. Then play with highlights, shadows, etc. I feel like I need more exposure but that just overexposes every thing. I do this for fun, I use my phone as my normal camera ?. I can post an example tonight if that would help. Thanks

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

For post-processing I like Affinity Photo:
[... ]
Cheaper than Photoshop ($70 CDN to purchase, rather than $120/year to rent), has >90% of the functionality.

Just a nit or two: for $120 a year Adobe subscription, you get also get Lightroom and cloud storage. That might not be a value to you, but it means your comparison above is not accurate.

I'm not going to tackle the ">90% of the functionality" part.

Chris

 

[johnmeyer]

Help - probably a post processing question? Just finishing lunch and stumbled on this post. I find many of my photos look flatter, dull, washed out ie not brilliant. I know this is a dumb question.....but any suggestions?

You might try clicking on the Auto button in the first section of the Develop module.

 

[brettbrandon]

Help - probably a post processing question? Just finishing lunch and stumbled on this post. I find many of my photos look flatter, dull, washed out ie not brilliant. I know this is a dumb question.....but any suggestions? I typically shoot landscapes in Auto with 5 shot AEB. I use the histrograph to "correctly" bracket my exposure setting. I take the RAW photos through Lightroom Classic to merge them. Then I use the color dropper tool to set color balance. I try playing with it but not happy with those results. Then I dehaze the photos. Then play with highlights, shadows, etc. I feel like I need more exposure but that just overexposes every thing. I do this for fun, I use my phone as my normal camera ?. I can post an example tonight if that would help. Thanks

Post the regular exposure raw file, I'll have a look.
I found the AEB to be rather weak as you only get .7 of a stop per bracket. Thats a whopping minus 1.4 and plus 1.4..... Not worth much.
A request was posted some time ago to have a selection for bracket size on the official forum. Never saw anything come of it.
I use the "overexposure" bars to get as much out of the shot as possible without blowouts.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

My take:

• A .7 stop bracket size is acceptable when taking a 5 shot bracket (which the user specified), but something larger would be better for a 3 shot bracket.
• A little blowout / over-exposure / under-exposure is acceptable on the outer shots of a 5 shot bracket range. You lose those parts when blending (if you do it right, or if you use decent blending software). Exposing that way means that you get more details at the other end (e.g. accepting blown highlights means that you captured more shadow details, which is the part you will retain during blending).
• When you're blending, you may have a histogram there too (depending on the app -- you will in Adobe products), so you can watch those to crank the exposures towards either end without going over (the triangle in Photoshop / Lightroom lights up when you start pushing bits off the end).
• "I do this for fun, I use my phone as my normal camera" -- A phone camera is still a phone camera. There are a lot of people that claim they are getting 'just as good as DSLR shots' with their phones, but they're not. A Mavic 2 Pro camera is somewhere in between, but it's lots better than a phone camera.

Chris

 

[Bob4131]

Post the regular exposure raw file, I'll have a look.
I found the AEB to be rather weak as you only get .7 of a stop per bracket. Thats a whopping minus 1.4 and plus 1.4..... Not worth much.
A request was posted some time ago to have a selection for bracket size on the official forum. Never saw anything come of it.
I use the "overexposure" bars to get as much out of the shot as possible without blowouts.

Sorry just saw your reply , I will when I get home thanks

 

[Bob4131]

My take:

• A .7 stop bracket size is acceptable when taking a 5 shot bracket (which the user specified), but something larger would be better for a 3 shot bracket.
• A little blowout / over-exposure / under-exposure is acceptable on the outer shots of a 5 shot bracket range. You lose those parts when blending (if you do it right, or if you use decent blending software). Exposing that way means that you get more details at the other end (e.g. accepting blown highlights means that you captured more shadow details, which is the part you will retain during blending).
• When you're blending, you may have a histogram there too (depending on the app -- you will in Adobe products), so you can watch those to crank the exposures towards either end without going over (the triangle in Photoshop / Lightroom lights up when you start pushing bits off the end).
• "I do this for fun, I use my phone as my normal camera" -- A phone camera is still a phone camera. There are a lot of people that claim they are getting 'just as good as DSLR shots' with their phones, but ithey're not. A Mavic 2 Pro camera is somewhere in between, but it's lots better than a phone camera.

Chris

I meant I am not a great photographer, I only use my cell phone to take many photos not a "good" camera.

 

[johnmeyer]

Post the regular exposure raw file, I'll have a look.
I found the AEB to be rather weak as you only get .7 of a stop per bracket. Thats a whopping minus 1.4 and plus 1.4..... Not worth much.

I didn't know that. I agree that it is not enough for a 3-exposure HDR. I haven't yet played with this. Are you saying it can't be changed?

Also, is it changing f-stop or shutter speed? I thought I read somewhere that it was changing f-stop. If so, this is the wrong way to create an HDR because you end up with different depths of field for each of the images. Instead, it must be done with shutter speed (I guess ISO could be used).

 

[brettbrandon]

I didn't know that. I agree that it is not enough for a 3-exposure HDR. I haven't yet played with this. Are you saying it can't be changed?

Also, is it changing f-stop or shutter speed? I thought I read somewhere that it was changing f-stop. If so, this is the wrong way to create an HDR because you end up with different depths of field for each of the images. Instead, it must be done with shutter speed (I guess ISO could be used).

You get to choose between 3 or 5 shots period. The bracket amount is set. It does use shutter speed for the brackets.
I like to use three stops plus, three stops minus range for hdrs.

 

[CanadaDrone]

The number of exposures (and the spacing between frames) you need for a proper HDR depend on two things: the dynamic range of the scene, and the dynamic range/performance of the sensor. There is no magical number, it is entirely dependent on each individual scene and the capabilities of the particular sensor in question. Trying to find a "rule" to stick to is going to end in disappointment sooner or later. Using more frames than necessary doesn't hurt anything, it just increases processing time for no gain. Sensors with low DR and also scenes with very wide DR will require more frames to capture the full DR with smooth gradients. On a similar note, bracketing frames on a scene where the DR can easily be captured in a single frame by the sensor provides no real benefit. The M2P is fairly limited in it's bracketing settings but it is very easy to do manually. RAW images from the 1" Sony sensor have surprisingly good DR and you will see good results if processed properly.

 

[Bob4131]

Post the regular exposure raw file, I'll have a look.
I found the AEB to be rather weak as you only get .7 of a stop per bracket. Thats a whopping minus 1.4 and plus 1.4..... Not worth much.
A request was posted some time ago to have a selection for bracket size on the official forum. Never saw anything come of it.
I use the "overexposure" bars to get as much out of the shot as possible without blowouts.

This the post processed image. I tried uploading the DNG but I am getting an error, it says wrong file extension. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
Thanks Bob

 

[brettbrandon]

This the post processed image. I tried uploading the DNG but I am getting an error, it says wrong file extension. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
Thanks Bob

View attachment 74074

You can upload it to Google Drive or something similar and post a link to it here.

 

[brettbrandon]

Heres an example of what can be done from a raw file. It had just rained and was rather overcast. The first is how the jpg came straight from the camera. The second was processed more for an artistic look not realistic. This was done in Lightroon 6.

 

[Bob4131]

You can upload it to Google Drive or something similar and post a link to it here.

Sorry, I was tired last night....not sure why I didn't use Google Drive then. Here is the RAW photo DJI_0262-HDR.dng , it is the 5 exposure merged (via Lightroom) file. I realize Lightroom can make it artistic but I am trying to stay with realistic

You can see what I did with it in the above post. Thanks
PS This is certainly not my most interesting photo but it captures my problem.

By the way, I know some just say to manually take 3-5 photos of the same thing but spin the ev wheel themselves between shots. I have cheated and taken a 5 AEB shot and then spun the wheel 3ev and taken another 5 AEB shot. That gives me 10 shots covering 6ev, I can then pick the ones I want to merge. I have tried it for some dusk shots where much of the photo is dark but I have some streetlights that I want to 'turn down'. Not sure it is the 'correct' or best way to do that.

Also I apologize for my delayed responses. I am not getting email notifications that you have posted.

 

[brettbrandon]

I have cheated and taken a 5 AEB shot and then spun the wheel 3ev and taken another 5 AEB shot. That gives me 10 shots covering 6ev, I can then pick the ones I want to merge.

That is a great work around, I will have to try that.

I have this same problem in the smoky mountains. When it is overcast like this there is a ton of scattered light reflecting off the humidity in the air and kind of has the effect of a fogged lens which gets worse with distance. The same shot on a sunny day would be much different.
For something long distance like this I would have used about F4.5. I'm not sure if you are aware but the posted pic is not full resolution at 3979 x 2982 pixels. Not sure if you did that for posting or if you are shooting that way.
Personally for this I would have my polarizer on set at 12 o'clock position to help remove some of the scattered light.

I have tried it for some dusk shots where much of the photo is dark but I have some streetlights that I want to 'turn down'. Not sure it is the 'correct' or best way to do that.

In photography there is no "correct" way in my opinion. What ever works for what you are trying to accomplish is the "best" way. Experiment and try new things like your work around for the weak bracketing...

Heres my quick go at the pic...