I went to Frame Park in Waukesha yesterday. The Fox River runs right thru the edge of downtown. I intended to take pictures of steam rising off the water. Alas, no steam. I can't remember whether it's supposed to be warm air over cold water or cold air over warm(er) water.

I wasn't going to go away empty. The Digital Nature Photography book my daughter gave me talks at length about adjusting your exposure by reviewing the histogram after each shot - move the mountain as far to the right as you can without any clipping. The writer is using manual settings to do this. This is what I was after

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Then I got into Elements and did very little to the images: very slight levels adjustment on the right side, +10 contrast boost, +10 saturation boost, sharpen.

Water003.jpg (133.84 KiB) Viewed 971 times

This is what you don't want; I didn't waste any time in Elements with blown highlights.

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...next post

Rusty

Rusty,

I just love the 2nd picture. You really did well on your test shots......your right, NOT EMPTY HANDED.

Here another I liked (only 3 attachments to a post). On this one I managed to get the histogram much closer to the right-side edge.

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Water008.jpg (113.54 KiB) Viewed 947 times

I'm not good enough to use manual settings, maybe just too clumsy. I used aperture priority (f/22) and let Nikon pick a shutter speed. I was using a 4x ND filter with a polarizer on top of that so I could get a slow shutter. Then I dialed in various exposure compensations, watching to see what happened to the histogram.

No steam, but still good fun.

Rusty

Those are totally wonderful, wish I could do that.

Rusty, the shots look nice to start with but after your adjustments they are awesome. I love the second one in your first post. I need to get that book. I have a few in my wish list on Amazon and I need to to move them to the cart and check out.

Kim, it's a darned good book!

It's not a tutorial of step-by-step in the digital darkroom. He's teaching concepts, composition, understanding light, what kind of lens to use for one kind of shot, which for others, etc. It's well written and easy to understand.

I have to laugh when he talks about specialized equipment. He will frequently say something like, "If extra carrying around extra weight is not a problem, and if you are not concerned with the cost, then it's a lot easier if you have ... whatever." I priced one of those whatevers at B&H -- it was a $1,200 wide angle lens

Don't misunderstand me, he is NOT preaching a lot of fancy and expensive equipment as the only way to do it.

If you buy it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Rusty

PS - He's a Canon Guy (his wife is Nikon).

Very interesting and superb results!
I think the 'expose to the right' advice is a very good one, although it is best to use it with raw and not to take specular highlights into account. With today's digital cameras, you can even forget manual exposure... just bracket!
On the other hand, choosing f22 leads to a loss of definition and contrast, as well as stacking ND and polarizer. Good for a dreamy effect, not for a sharp print.

Thank you, Michel,

f/22 + filters was the only way I could get the slow shutter I was after. If I had stacked 2 ND 4x maybe I could have moved the aperture into the middle to better use an optimal lens setting. But, another piece of glass, even high quality Cokin, wouldn't help definition. I guess there is a trade off for everything

I have not tried deliberately blowing the highlights in RAW and then seeing what I could do with it in ACR. Hmmmmm, another idea to play with.

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Rusty