[Leica] IMG: Moonrise from the Space Needle

[George Lottermoser]

On Feb 11, 2015, at 2:31 AM, Peter Klein wrote:

> I found a way to do better.
> <
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/24844563@N04/15876024034/in/photostream/lightbox/
>> 
> 
> I had bracketed my exposures. The original image I posted indeed had the
> core of the red tail lights blown. So was part of the moon. BUT... I had
> another image taken a couple of minutes later at about 2.5 stops less
> exposure. Here, a typical tail light ranged from about RBG = 255,160,80, to
> 192,79,61.  But even so, the red tail lights still came up as white when I
> "developed" the image to a JPG with a width of 1200 pixels in Capture One.
> 
> But when I exported that same image to a 16-bit TIF, and then downsized it
> in Picture Window Pro, things got much better. Sidways-viewed tail lights
> on the freeway were red. Tail lights pointing at the camera on the entrance
> ramp were orangy-pinkish, so they looked OK. And the moon is better in this
> picture.
> 
> This is more like it, it looks like what I remember seeing.
> 
> The RAW development algorithm and the resizing algorithm are both "black
> boxes." By using a different program to resize the image, I found a better
> black box for this situation. What does a program actually do when it has
> to mash four pixels down to one? Capture One (algorithm unknown) seems to
> emphasize the brightest pixel in the bunch. Picture Window Pro defaults to
> a Bicubic algorithm, which seems to weigh the darker pixels more, and I end
> up with something that looks like a bright tail light instead of a white
> pinpoint. Me happy.

so it was a matter of "proper exposure"
of and for those tail lights

Regards,
George Lottermoser 

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