@patdavid It was the EPL-1 that switched me to m4/3. The camera most hate initially and then eventually love. My wife bought me an E-P3, big step up in performance in many areas. I still use it at times. Then came an E-M5 and later an E-M1. I keep the E-M5 for spare body just in case and to be honest the E-M1 doesn’t really offer a lot more. The plastic kit lens received a lot of criticism but optically it’s a cracker - loose parts that can be wobbled about - nobody checked how firm they were when the camera was switched on. People might break it if they tried too hard.
My only beef with Olympus is pro lenses. Fast, heavy and expensive. Mostly the heavy aspect but that via F ratios ups the cost. Panasonic lenses can be used as well. That just leaves the macro lens - 60mm focal length means getting too close at higher magnifications.
The MkII EM-1 is a bit ouch price wise for me and I would wonder if another may come out in the next few years but unlike some they do update facilities in firmware so hard to be sure. Just a feeling from certain reviews.
ImageJ can also be used to stack and align. There is a spin off called Fiji that some reckon make this easier to do but from what I can see it just uses ImageJ plugins. I’ve also seen descriptions of Hugin for alignment and ImageJ for stacking. It’s a java app so can run on anything. What you get is a pretty powerful image processing core for scientific use and a graphical interface. People who understand that sort of thing write and publish macro’s for it. It’s hosted on a .gov site and is very widely used in certain scientific imaging areas. Free too.
Yep, imagej is popular with the NASA folks as well, iirc.
The E-M5 has been a great fun little camera for a long time for me, but I got to play with an XT2 recently (before I rented the 5dmk3) and I can still hear it whispering to me…
The biggest issue I have been having trying to create HDRs from the bracketed exposures is ghosting in the foreground rocks, as well as in the sky and sea. This was probably due to my hand holding the camera since I didn’t have my tripod with me. That was what led me to think that if I could create a pseudo HDR from a single raw, then it might get around the problems.
However perhaps I need to look more closely at the anti ghosting function of Luminance_HDR.
It does however seem that I will be able to make something out of the bracketed exposures hopefully!
The MK II EM-1 is shouting at me but I’m not listening. They seem to have achieved the same sort of dynamic range or better at ISO 200 than any one else.
My son bought a 5d IV. it has wonderful hidden auto features in auto mode but it doesn’t get used much. He also had 7D what ever the latest is, sold and bought an 80D instead.
I’ve got too much invested in lenses now to switch but this is why it’s tempting.
Why chase stops though when I can take 2 shots. It gains 1 over the Mk1.
I bought one at the start of the summer (or, more correctly, the University bought one that I get the exclusive use of). It’s an amazing camera, I have to say. I also got the 12-40mm f2.8 Pro lens. Amazing image quality. But, together, it is not smaller than a typical APS-C DSLR, and it is heavy. This is why my trusty little E-M10-ii with the nice Panasonic 20mm pancake remains in my possession, and is not going anywhere. I use the “big gun” when I “go out to take photos” and need the IQ, but I bring the little guy when I’m just out and about and want to have a camera on me… I’ve captured some great shots with both.
PS. I actually only bought the E-M1-ii because I needed it for my fieldwork as an archaeologist. Dust and rain resistance was key, as was increased resolution, and image fidelity. I’ve been using the “high res” mode to take pretty spectacularly detailed images of artifacts and sediment columns.
I will not say it’s a perfect camera, but I love mine. In fact I loved my X-T1, so when it was stolen I replaced it with the X-T2. The camera is not the only thing, the Fuji lenses are nice too.
I think this project is getting way beyond my skill set now, so I think I’ll probably end up with just stitching the panorama with the zero ev images, and be done with it
Yeah, for what I tend to shoot that 56mm is really calling my name big-time…
I almost pulled the trigger on an X-PRO2 as well. It was not a good day for GAS.
[edit] - we shouldn’t hijack @Brian_Innes thread w/o trying to help him as well. We can continue on a lounge thread.
Before I ended up with HDRmerge I did try dcraw-hugin-align-enfuse (Pat’s method) but results weren’t so good, due to images’ qualities of course. In HDRmerge my mask was a bit different, now I re-exported and tried different mask blur radius but the sky remains problematic… nothing one couldn’t “fix” in gimp =)
I think this project is getting way beyond my skill set now, so I think I’ll probably end up with just stitching the panorama with the zero ev images, and be done with it
{full metal bite} — You learn ****** (probably motherfucker) and you die and you learn dying better (says mosquito srgnt to mosquito privato). I feel your pain Brian… often the places I go and how get there… well a tripod it’s just out of the question, and so are lights or inflatable doll, ohhhhhh… even with a respectable WA lens I need to panoramix the heel out of everything… and HDR like a fooool. As if not confy enough, my pentax mirror is a loud piece of sheik and it also twist and shakes. But somedays, thanks ohh lord, somedays manage to bring something that holds the tears {country music now please} === version I QUIT version I PERSEVERE
@Brian_Innes don’t give up, your DNG image from HDRMerge is fine!
I love HDRMerge because masking is so ridiculously easy even though it’s manual. Being hand-held is no problem for HDRMerge. Parallax will be a problem when you try stitching your panorama, but that’s off-topic here.
I’ve found HDR+panorama to be a tough problem when dealing with moving objects, because objects move between bracketed shots (slightly, but still…) and also between panned shots.
I’ve tried many different solutions, and in the end the only way which worked for me was first to fuse stacks to TIF in Hugin, then stitch the fused images together.
But I also found that when the dynamic range is not two large, processing from a single RAW file (the best one among the bracketed shots) developed for maximized for dynamic range, gives much less problems.
As a side note, I hope HDRMerge will support XTrans raw files one day…
I hesitate to offer my comments in the light of the accurate comments above from skilled photographers - (some of my equipment is not the best, pics were usually taken on auto, I’m not interested in producing a very good picture for publication, only an adequate one for sharing online).
For a simplistic approach (holiday snaps, if you like) I created a plugin for the gimp to use three variants of the same raw image (typically “correct” and ±2EV, but occasionally (subjects in the shade) ±3EV.
If you want a large image for publication, my approach is not useful. If you want a small image and a quick process that can be applied to a (large) number of images, it might help.
And yes, there are downsides to this approach, even when the boosted exposure doesn’t produce noise, but for me it speeds up the process a little…
In the past I used to use the “best” exposure, and then spend time creating exotic curves to bring out the detail / roll off highlights. Now, for 90% of my images I just need a little local contrast enhancement (the process softens the merged image), a curve for slight contrast enhancement, and sharpening (plus any other corrections for lens distortion or tilting the camera).
Please don’t hesitate to participate! We try quite hard to be welcoming of people of all skill levels who use all computing platforms. If we have missed that mark somewhere, please let me know and I will do my best to correct it! (Though I don’t count our sometimes extremely technical conversations as off the mark-- I think people are willing to explain!).
I edited in RawTherapee, to produce as nice an overall image as possible. Key points, highlight recovery in colour propogation mode and graduated filter. Brian-TMO-IMGP2648.jpg.out.pp3 (10.8 KB)
Then again in RawTherapee to produce a flat looking 16 bit tiff, with just highlight recovery and no clipping. Brian-TMO-IMGP2648…tif.out.pp3 (10.7 KB)
Then ran tiff through LuminanceHDR, again trying for the best overall output.
pregamma = 0.8
operator = mantiuk06
contrast mapping = 0.05
saturation factor = 2
detail factor = 1
Then used Gimp to merge the best part from each.
Initial output from RawTherapee (jpg) as bottom layer, and output from LuminanceHDR as top layer.
Applied 50% opacity to top layer.
Added layer mask to top layer, all white.
Selected bottom layer and used selection wand to select all the sky.
Inverted selection.
Selected mask of top layer.
Bucket filled black into the pebbles area of the top layers mask (wand selection limits black to just pebbles area)
Selected whole image, still with mask selected of top layer and applied gaussian blur, vertical only, 2 pixels.
Flattened all visible layers and used levels tool to fill histogram (dragged white down to end of peak).
@Brian_Innes yes as @sguyader wrote, update! It looks like you’re using the old 5.0, while tomorrow we’re releasing 5.3, and your theme is broken - close RT and delete your options file: File Paths - RawPedia
Hopefully you will be able to download a 5.3 build by Saturday.
In the future please don’t resize or crop screenshots - we often miss important info when users do that.
Thanks - I suppose what I was trying to say is that I prefer a quick and dirty approach, and it possibly offers some of what the OP was looking for. I’ve found this place friendly, but I don’t want to spread my ignorance.
Anyway, I don’t come here often (too busy compiling ad trying to find time to deal with my photo backlog), but this topic looked interesting.
@Morgan_Hardwood, thanks for the suggestion about upgrading rawtherapee. Ive managed to get 5.2 installed, and it seems to be opening the dng from hdrmerge without any issues.
I’ll bear in mind not to resize / crop screenshots in future
@zarniwhoop, thanks for sharing that technique , and I’ll be sure to try out the gimp plugin.
@james, that’s a nice results from a single raw image. I’d be happy with that sort of output in the final panorama if I ever get around to stitching it.
Why chase stops though when I can take 2 shots. It gains 1 over the Mk1.
