|
I've found that I really like the OOC JPEG output of my Fuji X-T2 for daylight scenes. It works great (with the need to shoot RAW for occasional slight post-processing) for pictures of people in mixed, low interior lighting as well. But I'm having more trouble getting results I like with it for night landscapes. It's a perennial issue for me and one of the major reasons I like to shoot night landscapes on film. First, two film examples:  Not a great composition but I like the tonality. The film can't save all the highlights and get good shadow detail but it has a naturalistic look that I appreciate.  Even when I have to process, scan, and correct the color myself, I'm happy enough with the results. But I can't really get that close with the Fuji. Especially when combining bracketed exposures, I'm finding it hard as hell to not get my results looking like bad CGI.  This one is from a single exposure. Shot RAW, processed in ACR by setting to the Classic Chrome profile, custom WB, Highlight/Shadow adjustments, HSL and Split Toning to dial down the yellow in the highlights and magenta in the midtones, and a mild RGB curve to tweak contrast. It looks pretty digital, but I like it ok.  With this, I used Merge to HDR Pro in PS to combine four RAW files. The lights behind the window were so much brighter than the surrounding scene. It looked like a bad video game environment rendering at first, and the results of my further adjustments... changed that, but I'm still worried that it looks over-processed in a different way. ACR default profile, uniform custom WB, and Highlight/Shadow adjustments for all RAW files before loading into PS. Merge to HDR Pro, 32-bit, tone in ACR (just used this step for some HSL adjustment). Then I went hog-wild with adjustment layers in PS. Individual R, G, and B curves, Color Balance for shadows, midtones, and highlights - all applied selectively using Apply Image and adjusting the layer mask curves so that I could affect a kind of more-detailed split tone. Try as I might, I can't seem to get the kind of 'clean warmth' in all my digital night shot highlights, especially that HDR composite. I wish there was (or I knew of) an adjustment that does something like Hue/Saturation but only applies it to warm or cool highlights/shadows/midtones... the idea being that one could easily e.g. make warm highlights cooler while not making cool highlights turn neon blue. The way I'm doing it right now, it seems like my HDR composite results either look crunchy and over-processed or like stills from an unprocessed video shot with a log gamma profile. Here's one more example. A complete failure of an attempted night shot with the Fuji. This is another composite. Processed using the same PS tools as the other composite (the close-up of the same building):  It looks like an architectural rendering. Any ideas on how I could get it to look more like those film examples? I've tried processing with VSCO Portra presets, but the results are about the same. Is something like this guy's stuff the best I can hope for with the Fuji at night? If so, does it look to you like there are any techniques I haven't listed that this guy is using? SMERSH Mouth fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Mar 21, 2020 |
#
¿
Mar 21, 2020 04:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 07:52 |
|