Cold Photo Shoot (Take II)

Lance took me along on a shoot yesterday.  It was cold enough to make 20 degrees Fahrenheit feel really nice.  Lance is really good at finding color in an exposure - something that I could not, and knew it.  I would point and grunt, "Hey, you need to get this one..."

I did get a few that I liked.  I shot in RAW +jpg, to learn the differences between the two.  I am also learning about basic post-processing.  For a guy that learned to shoot with film, digital is both a gift and a curse. You can see the exposure immediately, and at least get close quickly.  At the press of a button, you can change the focal point, the shutter speed, the aperture and even the film speed. The flexibility and clarity is really amazing to me.

In comparison, shooting film was more like shooting with a blindfold on, and the expense of the film and its processing was highly prohibitive - at least for me.  You took your shot film for processing and then had to go pick it up a week or so later.  You try to plan on the lowest ISO that you could - say 100 on a good outdoor shoot.  If you were caught with low light conditions you could push or pull the film a bit, but you were at the mercy of the developer to mind that you had shot it as something else.  On a good day, I would shoot 4 or 5 rolls of film and get about 125 prints - most of which were throw-aways.  Now, I make up for that by shooting 3 to 5 shots if I am really trying to get one shot - something that other photographers kind of laugh at me.  But it only costs me memory.  I love it...

You would have to see these in before and after stages to really appreciate the results - at least I did...

Original .jpg - no edit (except re-sizing)

Clark Fork River 2/26/11 - edit from RAW

-edit from jpg

Though I tried to follow the same workflow on both of these, I obviously did not use the same levels.  I can say that the RAW image seemed to withstand more extremes before artifacts and noise began to be an issue. Still, both versions were pretty high quality and the editing had more effect on them than any other factor.

-edit with HDR

The third one is done with a trial version of Photomatix HDR Pro.  I am barely a beginner on editing, which is probably evident; but this photo has some fairly obvious differences in that the better aspects of higher and lower exposures can be quickly combined, which allows greater capacity for saturation and color levels changes.  Notice that the trees and mountains are lit more and have their own color in the HDR edit.  The only problem that I had with this photo was that the HDR version had the most noise and I had to mask and desaturate the snow to make it less obvious.  

I also want to point out that in the hands of more experience, such as in Lance's hands, the exposure can be taken with the edit in mind at the time of the shot. This greatly increases the photo's capabilities during the processing stages.

I learned that the slightest color on the grayest day is a huge bonus.  Shooting 99% of what we shot yesterday, but in film, would have been a huge waste of time and money.  Light has always been the biggest factor in photography, and that is the same in the digital side as well - but with the added benefits of your own edits light becomes an even greater potential ally.  

In summary, quality light and editing can produce huge variations on your shots.  RAW and jpg are both good in my opinion, but the RAW had the advantage of having seemingly less colorful noise.  I think I will continue shooting RAW for now.  I need all the help I can get.