My Autopano Pro forum

Old engravings nostalgia...

Ansel Adams! My photographic hero! I wish to have been able to spend time next to him watching.

Yes, the lighting was very unusual. There is a bit of a feel of a old landscape painting. The photograph was taken at sunset just as the sun broke through an opening in the clouds.

Last edited by seedseller (2008-05-07 14:13:33)

Our eyes see so much more dyamic range than we can ever get, even using the best of HDR techniques. This definitely does have an impressionistic look--perhaps even more like some of the fanciful landscape paintings of the 19th century.

Also, we like to take photographs early in the morning or late at night. The light is more reddish ("warm") and with a smaller range between light and shadow. Though sometimes we get an image like this one. Lots of shadow and not much light--but tending to be overexposed where it is sunlight. In Ansel Adams days, this meant long hours in the darkroom. Not it means long hours with Photoshop.

When using HDR to simulate a wider dynamic range than a typical photograph, we end up not being able to balance the light and shadows anything like our eyes would see. Thus, HDR images do have a "strange and beautiful" or exotic look about them.

I don't think that any HDR software that I have used comes close to the dynamic range for light and shadow that our eyes can see. Hopefuly, new generations of the technique will come closer (hint, hint Autopano development team).

Last edited by seedseller (2008-05-07 17:10:21)

And sorry, to all of you which soft do you use for HDR ? CS3 or Photomatix or any other ?

Looks like an old painting !
I like this effect ! very nice...