Visited here this week, and I know its all been seen before, even done before .... but it's such a fabulous space that I couldn't resist putting my own slant on it (pun intended!).

All with the K7 & Pentax 'A' 28mm f2.8, mostly at f5.6. Some of you may even be amazed to discover that I managed to get the entire DR of these shots within one single frame



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As always all debate and critique welcomed!

John, and all this time I've been thinking you had used the self-timer.

The process gets a bad press, and has become associated with that over-detailed, over-saturated gravelly texture and highly raised shadows that go beyond the natural. As has been said a few times lately, it is really just another 'tool' to compensate for the DR limitations of the sensor. It works well here because the DR extremes are natural and close to what our eyes would detect themselves when scanning around the scene.

Photomatix Pro has a number of presets including a few which are 'natural' & 'photographic', they are good starting points for using the software for this aim.

This is really for general discussion for those who have the models with the Program Line (or you Bob if you upgrade!), but the thing about Program Line is you can't 'turn it off' ... its always there, and there's a risk you might not know.

I didn't really realise it at first, but there's always one of the Program Line options active, and it tells the camera what to prioritise when choosing P auto settings. So, if we use P, then it really makes sense to take control of this function, or we're letting the camera do things that may not be ideal for our subjects.

The choice is really whether to prioritise higher shutter speeds / smaller apertures for more depth of field / or to use the embedded MTF data in a DA lens to try and use the 'optimum' aperture of that lens for image quality. The choice is ours!

Of course, if using any of the other autoexposure modes then it is superfluous, but there are many times when P is the easy one to go for, and it may be helpful to have the camera set up ready for the best 'program line' in that case.

OK, sorry if it was superfluous. Glad you've sorted it out.

ISO 400 is twice as sensitive to light as 200, so no, in the context of what I understand your question to be. You don't want to limit yourself to ISO 4OO just because a camera setting is preventing it going lower, you only want to set the higher ISO's when you have a particular need for it.

Apart from the highlight correction as already mentioned, the only thing I can think of (& I have a K7, so not sure if it applies the same way) is the 'Program Line' limits, which are set from the Info screen (press info when in shooting mode). Here I choose 2 things which affect the exposure settings when in 'P'mode - 1)ISO lower & upper limits & 2) Fast / Slow / MTF which affects the choice of aperture.

So have a look at these 'program line' iso settings - highlight the option on the info screen and use the e dial to lower the 400 to 100 (say). Having said all this, this setting should not prevent the ISO being manually lowered, so try this and let us know if you can do it. But it will cause it to default back to a minimum of 400 each time you switch on or off, or leave it for a while without taking a shot.

I've just seen them there now and I think that's worked well, definitely improved. Tell us, what was it that made you try the HDR processing?

Yes, I see, but I was including the limitations of the processing possibilities as well ... HDR frees us from many of these also.

That is the traditional thinking - that is being challenged here really, and it has been my suspicion for a while that we may be accepting a rendition of such scenes that is in fact constrained by the technology of single shots and the processing, but does not in fact display the DR as the eye can discern. Its been great to explore this in such detail.

What is 'reasonable? Different for everyone of course, but for myself I'm not satisfied with the tonal and textural qualities of any of the single shot versions. They are heroic efforts and expertly wrung from the single DNG, but don't give the feel and depth that the HDR version does IMO. This I can only assume is due to the exposure principle needed to capture them - ie, non-conventional highly underexposed. Now this is not playing to the sensor's strengths, putting mid tones and everything below well into the lower half of the spectrum, the part where the sensor is weakest. Then you have to crank up the brightness from that data.

The HDR on the other hand records bands of data and has one record of each brightness level sitting in the sensor sweetspot. Is it reasonable to have to make such a compromise with IQ just to produce an OK rendering of the scene from a single shot?

Actually, there is a logic to it, so it doesn't have to be such a shock - the price issue was always going to become less significant over time, and if you're not overly concerned about subjects that might show moire (you said that LR could sort it if needed), then I remember from my testing that in fact if you carry out global sharpening mainly, a non-optimised workflow (I think you do batch work in LR?) then in fact the recommendation was for the 's'.

... (Conclusions) 4) Basic Photoshop-Style Sharpening

Finally I subjected the shots to progressivly higher amounts of fine edge sharpening (radius 0.7). Up to a very high level (K5IIs 200% - K5II 300%) each shot maintained quality acceptably. After this threshold the K5II image started to break down in smoother textural areas, flatter surfaces becoming grainy and rough.

.... Now, if your Photoshop-Style sharpening is limited to this approach (ie at a single radius setting), you are going to be hitting this limit with the K5II for your very detailed and intricate shots, unless you don't like them sharp. The only other choice would be to use a layers and masking-type approach to apply differing degrees of sharpening to different radius settings, thereby deliberately reducing the sharpening given to those more delicate softer areas. But this is a lot more work.

4) Conclusion - if your PS-style sharpening is applied globally to a single radius setting, and you need to apply high amounts to very detailed, inticate subjects
- choose non AA Filter 's' model