Too bright, too dark, Just Right

It seems that you might be getting a touch defensive here Nigel? If you put your images on the Forum you must expect comments, sometimes praise and sometimes criticism.

I don't think anyone has written anything unreasonable and everyone's opinions are valid. In terms of what I've said, the blue of the sky looks wrong to me, the shade of blue is too bright and has too much Cyan. That's my opinion, whether you feel it's right or wrong! I didn't say the sky was too bright in comparison to what's below (as you've mentioned above), I said the blues were too bright, i.e. the wrong shade and intensity.

Personally, my feeling is that one of the best ways to learn is to receive comments and constructive criticism but it does require an open attitude and a willingness to accept other views. One thing I learned very early on this forum is that there is a huge range of opinions and everyone has wildly different opinions of what is right or wrong in an image. It does seem however that the majority on this post are in agreement.

Regards
David

David, I have made my 'defence' purely with the aim of stimulating further discussion and thoughts about exposure etc. Most of my input on this forum is constructed with this specific aim.

A bit of food for thought, or some musings on this thread!... Most photographs of general scenes are compromises. There's likely to be something of interest in a bright area in a scene, likewise in the shadows. One can compress the tonal range using an HDR technique, or one can adjust the different parts of an image with a dodging and burning technique which was quite simple with a black and white negative placed in an enlarger.

When colour is added into the equation, the colour balance in a sunlit area can be quite different to a shadow area where a mostly blue sky will render the shadows bluey, a more 50-50 sky would render them more neutral. Distant objects may also be affected by UV haze - some use a filter to help eliminate this, some do not (they're not designed to be just lens protectors!)

In any event, a serious photographer will base the exposure of an image on the part he considers is most important (often skin tone) though if it is a photograph of clouds we'd expose for the sky, if of a general subject in the shadows we'd expose for that. There's nothing new there.

Early digital photographs (often scans) were held back by the available colour palate of computers at the time. Early computers of the 1980's could only use 4, 16 or 256 colours depending on the make and model. Each graphic squares being limited to a small selection of pixel colours rather than being able to have any pixel colour placed in the grid. How would this discussion have fared back then? Clearly the technology back then could not produce a natural image. Even now different sensors use different techniques to achieve satisfactory results. We've progressed a long way but doubt we have reached the destination yet. New technologies will continue to provide for better representations of a scene as we've found that each generation of digital camera improves on the previous one. We've had 8-bit sensors, 12-bit and now even 14-bit. What would the ultimate number of bits be and would that produce the perfect, natural image?

So given the compromises, how can anyone say that a photograph can look natural? The subject itself changes its appearance depending on the current lighting and if the subject is placed near an object of a different colour it might reflect that too. I feel there are too many variables to render something as looking natural given the original object/scene's looks itself is not constant.

Sometimes an HDR approach might render a contrasty scene as looking more natural (given our eye's ability to balance the lighting in the original scene.) Some of John R's church interiors demonstrate this admirably. Yet an HDR of another scene produced in exactly the same way might look awful!

As I said, these were just musings while wondering what a 'natural' looking photograph is really supposed to look like!

John K

In this thread I'm losing the will to live. It makes me wonder what will appear next - perhaps a post full of mathematical equations from quantum mechanics or chaos theory, to explain why it is impossible to contribute an example image.

For the pedants here, only someone who was standing on the spot at the moment the shutter opened (usually the photographer) could say whether the final image is completely natural, and it is quite likely that even he/she will have forgotten anyway, by the time the image is processed into a typically viewable form.

Of course there are many variables and balancing them is a process full of compromises. But surely people have, from their extensive experience of the real world, a reasonable idea of the natural appearance of most types of scene. And surely that idea, consciously or subconsciously, is in mind whenever we are post processing - in making decisions about how we process the final photograph to represent the scene, or when we choose to cause (areas of) the image to deviate from the natural appearance for artistic and/or evocative purposes.

John R asked us to post what we think are natural images in terms of light and colour. He also asked us to keep the thread simple - quote, "...let's not over-think things!"

This shot of a park scene on a sunny April afternoon (3.21 p.m.) was processed into three different images:



In my opinion:
The first is not natural - not bright enough for sunshine, and contrast and saturation are too low.
The second is not natural - too saturated, particularly the red/yellow tones are too strong for mid-afternoon.
The third looks close to the natural appearance of a scene like this one at that time of day:



Of course people will agree or disagree - but that is the point of this thread.

Philip

Ronnie, I agree that some images should be dark, but I think you have overdone the undercooking on this one. The strong shadows (assuming that they are naturally present) indicate that there is quite a lot of bright sunlight reaching the woodland floor so, for a natural appearance, perhaps about one stop more exposure is needed.

Philip

Thanks for the feedback, Philip - it's helpful to have your input. I have raised the exposure by one stop and as you can see, it gives a more familiar take on the scene. My own preference is still for the darker image which captures the atmosphere of this woodland (deep in a hollow) photographed in April with the sun not too high, but I agree, the lighter exposure is technically a more correct image. Perhaps a half stop would work for us both. I did also play around by lifting shadow and dark areas, reducing contrast etc, but this flattened the image.



This has been an interesting exercise, and it reminds me that photography is an art as well as a science, both subjective and definitive. Maybe these inherent contradictions are what keep us obsessing (which I enjoy).

OK, I'm coming back for some more !

How about this one ? Natural ? Again, has a pretty wide DR I think, between the deepest shadow top left corner and the hotspots on the flower pot.