Ely Cathedral HDR

[mikep]

Hi all

I recently visited Ely on a brief trip - spent the whole day in and around the Cathedral. Spectacular place!

Tried a few HDR shots... and processed them through NIK software - HDR Pro. I would appreciate your views as am thinking of putting them into my camera club exhibition! I went for a 'high structure' look, as I quite like it and feel it suits the subject... but we're all different! ;-)

Untitled by Mike

Untitled by Mike

Untitled by Mike

Cheers guys.

Mike

[John Liddle]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

Obviously a stunning place to visit!

I think the high structure look is OK, but unless I am mistaken Nos 1 & 3 need their verticals correcting - a slight anti-clockwise rotation is needed.

Also, I think you needed a greater spread on the exposure - in No 2 the windows are blown out (a problem I often find with my own efforts - it is not easy to judge how much AEB to employ).

[AlexR!]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

Mike, I quite like the 'high key' look in 1 and 3, but the downside of this style is that it has blown the windows in no 2 (as John says) and these are a primary elements of that particular image, so I think you are losing the benefit of the HDR. I love the compositions, and the slightly gritty detail, but, again as John says, there is something about all 3 that make my eyes go slightly off; I'm not sure if it is verticals or non-centring, or even if it is fixable (transformations of multiple verticals are tricky things as we all know).

[mikep]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

Thanks guys.

I agree with the blown highlights - tricky to get right, and I did try different bracketing.

The verticals are interesting, in that the same point on the pillars are cut at top and bottom, so I think they are about right (look OK with grid lines in place on the crop tool!), but I suspect I hadn't centred the camera correctly - again, this is something I found tricky to do in situ!

TBH - there is another reason... and that is that the 2 sections of the Cathedral are not aligned along an axis - so the building itself is actually out of alignment! This doesn't explain the verticals, but helps to explain part of the challenge with these shots!

Thanks for your comments guys, appreciated.

M

[Stan]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

I find that using HDR when you have "blown" windows tends to make for an odd looking result - sometimes instead of processing HDR you can manually blend two of the images - the "0" exposure for the main and the -1 or -2 for the windows

stan

[Tigger]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

Also, I think you needed a greater spread on the exposure - in No 2 the windows are blown out (a problem I often find with my own efforts - it is not easy to judge how much AEB to employ).

agree, when the range becomes very extreme with bright windows and a dark inside you have to bracket more either 5 or 7 as will will allow for a bright sky - you can make a copy image of the darkest one, then dropping that exp by another stop and this sometimes works when blending, or if that fails I sometimes use layers in PS. ..

I'm not too keen on the high key look in cathedrals as the stonework looks like the image has lots of noise ...plus I like to go dark :)

[ST-EOS]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

Wonderful architecture but so difficult to create a composition where the vertical look natural. I keep coming back to the third image love the colour in the ceiling but I can't make my mind up about the starburst of light.
I think you've done well overall Mike, not an easy subject to capture.


Peter

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

[tesarver]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

There is no reason to reiterate what has been state, but of the set 1&3 are my favorite

Tom

[chrisec]

Re: Ely Cathedral HDR

There is no reason to reiterate what has been state, but of the set 1&3 are my favorite

Tom

Agree with Tom 1&3 are favourite