[Leica] Parking lot bum

[pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)]

Steve and Doug:

I was very happy with the M8's performance.

Dynamic range is an Achilles' heel of all digital, not just the M8. This 
was one of those approximately 7-stop situations I mentioned earlier. 
These two raven shots were difficult. The only shots that were harder were 
sunlit waterfalls, rapids or cascades with black shadowed rocks. For 
those, it was "pick one," because I just was not going to get detail in 
both. The

I don't have a good tripod, so multiple exposures and HDR combining of 
images wasn't really an option for me (but thanks for the tip, Tina).

Per Mark Davison's advice, I took my little Minolta spot meter M with me. 
A bit of work with that the first couple of days gave me my "base" sunlit 
exposures. Basically, it amounted to finding the brightest thing I wanted 
detail in, and closing down 1/2 to 1 stop from that.

Base exposure for full sunlight turned out to be 1/500 at f/8 at ISO 160 
for stuff with no really bright reflective stuff in it. Close down 1/2 
stop for things with the bright gray silica that covers a lot of 
Yellowstone. Once I knew this, I would give it my best guess, take a test 
shot, chimp the histogram and adjust if needed.

The raven shots were difficult because there were very bright clouds 
behind him, and his chest was both black and in shadow. He was on the car 
for a while, so I had a little time to mess with exposure and chimp before 
I caught him vocalising.  I believe I'd set the exposure for the trees 
behind him, which also worked out so the brightest parts of the clouds 
just barely blew out on the histogram, but had some gradation at the 
edges.

Back home, I used Capture One.  I used a negative exposure compensation, I 
think about -0.35, so the brightest parts of the clouds just hit 254 or 
255. There was still some gradation in the clouds, just a couple of 
values, but that seemed to be enough so that it wasn't too ugly. I also 
brought up the midtones and low tones a bit with the midtone slider. This 
seemed to work as well as using curve to boost the levels of the black 
feathers.  I'm sure reflection off the car roof helped.

All in all, not easy, but doable. I was worried about these shots until I 
got them into C-One.  I knew I'd nailed a good moment, and I could see the 
crow had great detail on the camera's LCD. But could I recover enough 
detail in the clouds so that they wouldn't look posterized-ugly?

Color neg film would have been so much easier. Exposer for the crow so he 
was about one stop below nominal, then scan for maximum range and burn in 
the clouds.

--Peter

Steve Barbour wrote:
> nice Peter... prefer the first,  so you were entirely happy with your
> M8 under the circumstances.. ?
>
> Steve

> On Sep 19, 2007, at 12:39 AM, Peter Klein wrote:
>
>> This fellow spent his time hanging out with his delinquent chums,
>> eating bugs off parked cars and making crude remarks at passers-by:
>>
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/Yellowstone/L1001874CrowProfile-w.jpg.html>
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/Yellowstone/L1001873CrowFace.jpg.html>
>>
>> The two shots were taken within seconds of each other.  Which one
>> do you like better?
>>
>> M8, CV 90/3.5.
>>
>> --Peter