The shots should have been spectacular, but I managed to screw up the exposure... I bracketed the shot, and the lower bracket, 1/3 ev darker was the shots below. The bottom shot, darkened a tad in photochop, and the color balance adjusted. Is the color too far off? The last light of the day was completely horizontal, 5 more minutes, and the shot would have been scrapped. It was very yellow/orange, and the shot seems to show that. Now then, what can I do to pic #1 to make it better than the tweaked picture #2? #1 #2
Low sun angles produce more ultra-violet light than when the sun has a high angle. You might look into a filter to deal with the 'problem'. However, I personally, can't see anything wrong with the photos. They are nice shots Hemi!
Bill, thanks for the comments. I am personally bummed about the water bottles being completely blown out--you can hardly make out the red stripe above the trucks, much less the 'Union Pacific' lettering midway up the wall of the tender.
A perfect picture of a moving object in low angled fading light........you don't ask for much do you! Given that the sun is almost BELOW the level of the track I don't think you could do much better.
I like the first picture better. The sky is stronger and the gold color is more dramatic. In any case, the lighting condition under which you made this shot is difficult, withoug a doubt. The light balance is moving more toward red, the closer the sun gets to the horizon. That is why we see those great yellows and reds at sunset.
Hemi, Are you familiar with the Shadow/Highlight feature in Photoshop? It lets you hold back the highlights while boosting the shadows. You can control either separately. It might help you with the highlights unless they're totally blown out. Otherwise, I liked the picture. In some situations like this I will deliberately underexpose. But it's really hard to judge beforehand, especially with a moving object.
Siggie, Your images are showing up as red X's.... Either email them to me, or apply for a Rail Images account, and you can post them there.
It works at home, but not at work.... Steenking firewalls.... Thanks, Siggie, but I think the original is best. I guess I am just too hard on myself.
Hemi, If you want, email me the original image, and I can look at it and see what might be done. You might have to layer the image, and work on separate layers.
Hemi, I messed around with some photo software and as far as I am concerned your original is the keeper. Great late light there.
Thanks, guys! I may try to play with it, but I just don't know how to play with photoshop that well. As far as I know, that's likely the last shot of 3985 I'll have this year.
Hi Hemi, All in all the first shot is a great shot. I'm reading you were looking for detail in the sunlit part of the photo. I'm think stopping down 2 stops or more would have been the place to start. As far as the photoshop image if the detail isn't there photoshop can't find it. A case like this you could have used the "sunny sixteen" rule. Which states using the ISO as the shutter speed at f-16. So for lets say ISO 100 it would be 1/100 of a sec at f16. hope this helps. joe
This is a good news/bad news situation. I had a look at Hemi's originals, courtesy of Hemi, and I think it's more a problem of resolution than it is of exposure. The good news is that, according to my interpretation, his exposure was spot-on. Only the highlights of the white steam were "blown out." Few of the shadows were "blocked." The midtones had sufficient color depth that they could be "popped up" as desired. That's a matter of personal taste. The bad news is that Hemi's 3 MP camera just can't capture the detail he was looking for. There was also a good amount of lens flare, which further obscured the details. The flare showed itself when I examined the lettering on the sides the aux tenders. The red lettering was obliterated by flare from direct lighting on the yellow sides The originals were far superior in definition and color depth than his Web image. The sky was accurately rendered. Some of the background at the left was underexposed, naturally, but that can be corrected quite easily, as there is plenty of color depth and luminosity. In all, it was an outstanding image in the original! But pixels is pixels, and crispness is crispness. The original image was about as far as he could push his equipment. Hemi made a wise choice to bracket, as the darkest exposure was spot on. It's my judgment that a darker exposure would not have gained much. A darker exposure might have reduced the lens flare a little bit, but he needed more than that.
