Chromatic Aberration along the Bear Tooth Highway

I photographed this scene along the Bear Tooth Highway.  I used a Canon 5D Mark III camera and a Canon 16-35mm lens set at 16mm.  The lens was set to f16.  I used 3 exposures -  -2,  0,  and +2.

I compared HDR results using Photoshop CS6, Photomatix Pro and Nik HDR Effx Pro 2.   The result above is with Nik HDR Effx Pro 2.  I liked it best because it looked sharper than the Photomatix result and more natural than the Photoshop result.  All three programs have numerous adjustments that I could have used to improve the results, so don't accept this opinion as my final answer.

The image looks fine in the normal size range.  It has chromatic aberration that is disturbing when enlarged beyond 100%.  I tested the adjustments available in Photomatix Pro and Nik HDR Effx Pro2 and produced the following results:

The top row shows Photomatix with CA correction turned on and then off.  The bottom row shows Nik HDR Effx Pro 2 with Red/ Cyan set to -40.

Bryce Canyon National Park is Beautiful

 Bryce Canyon National Park is located in southwest Utah.  It is famous for it's towering pinnacles of multicolored rock called hoodoos.  The hoodoos are up to 20 stories tall.  When the hoodoos seem to glow when they are lit by the warm colors of the setting sun.

The Paiute Indians believed that the hoodoos were Legend People that the trickster Coyote had turned to stone.  They called them "red painted faces".  The first European to live here was a Mormon pioneer named Ebenezer Bryce.  His neighbors started calling the area Bryce's canyon.

 Bryce is so beautiful that everyone gets a good photo.  They usually take many more as they ooh and aah.  When they look at their photos later, they are disappointed.  They all look the same and are not nearly as spectacular as Bryce looked at the time.

 

It's important to provide a sense of scale. The photo above uses a tree to help demonstrate the size of the rocks.

 

This photo uses near and far objects to give a sense of distance.  It also uses the green of near and distant trees to provide contrasting color.

 

 Lighting is extremely important at Bryce.  It's easy to produce photos that merge all the hoodoos into a single red mass. The hoodoos need shadows to show that they are many separate towers.

 I used HDR (High Dynamic Range) for this group of photos.  This allowed me to provide texture in the brightly lit rocks and to provide details in dark shadows.  I made adjustments in processing to lighten and darken objects in the images.  

Using HDR significantly increases the number of exposures taken.  You can be accused of using the Spray and Pray technique. With the right subject, HDR can be spectacular.  If HDR doesn't work for a subject, you may find that the best single exposure wasn't the same setting as your camera's meter would have selected.

High Road to Taos

I stopped at a fascinating little gallery in an old house on the "High Road to Taos".  Most of the house was used for display.  One room served as an artist's studio.  I requested permission to photograph it.  The image above shows the room viewed from the entry exactly as the artist left it.  I used  a 3 exposure HDR to control the contrast.  I used a Canon 5D Mark II and a 24-70mm lens set to 30mm.

Three Sacred Places in the Land of Enchantment

San Geronimo Church

The Tiwa people had lived here for centuries before the Good News of the Gospel arrived.  The Franciscan friars were attracted by the permanent pueblo settlement and decided that it was lacking a church.  They used force to convert the natives and more force to encourage them to build a mission.  In 1680 the pueblo revolted, killed the friars and destroyed the church.

The Spanish were back a decade later and the pueblo was reconverted to Christianity.  The church was rebuilt.  In 1847 the United States Army occupied the area and sent a territorial governor to Taos.  With the Spanish gone, the Native People including some from the pueblo decided to govern themselves.  They assassinated the governor.  The United States Army attacked the pueblo.   The church walls were 4 feet thick.  Hundreds of women and children sought refuge there.  Many of them were killed when the army used artillery to destroy the church.  

The dead were buried in the cemetery next to the church.  The bell tower of the mission was rebuilt as a reminder of what had happed here.  A new church was built nearby and still stands.  The cemetery has been used for centuries.   It doesn't have clearly defined plots, bodies are buried among and on top of other bodies.  The simple wooden markers deteriorate and are removed.  The ground is considered holy ground and visitors are not allowed to enter.

The Sanctuario de Chimayó is known worldwide for its sacred dirt.  The church was built in 1871 following a series of miraculous events.  While the miracles are considerably different in several versions of the story they all agree on a divine presence at this spot. The church has been dubbed the “Lourdes of the United States".

Thousands pilgrims visit the church each year.  Many have reported miraculous healing during or after touching or eating the sacred dirt beneath the church.  Besides the hole containing the sacred soil, the church contains hundreds of crutches, casts, and other items that people discarded when they were cured. 

"The Ranchos de Taos Church," San Francisco de Asis, was completed in 1815 and provides one of the best examples of Franciscan Old World architectural ideals combined with New World building techniques.  It has walls that are four feet thick and enormous buttresses.  It is built of dried mud and needs to be recoated with mud on a regular basis. 

This church attracts artists and photographers as well as the church at Chimayo attracts pilgrims.  The front of the church is impressive, but artists are attracted to the back of the building and the way that light transforms the building.  It is the most photographed and most painted church in America.

Like the others before me, I wanted to show the building as more than a simple pile of mud.  I photographed the sun at the top corner of the building.  Since the range of light exceeded the capablity of my camera, I used a series of exposures to create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) image of the building.  The bright sun created a series of internal reflections within the lens.  The number of exposures multiplied the effect. A pair of birds dropped in to assist with the composition.  The resulting image combines form and fantasy, and clearly was taken in "the Land of Enchantment".

Open Fridge HDR Exercise

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I don't know what other men do when their wife is having a "girls night out".  I photographed the fridge - with the door wide open.  It worked best this way because she  doesn't understand me.  The next day her friends would hear - "You'll never guess what I caught Allen doing last night!  He turned out all the lights in the house, got out his camera and opened the fridge up wide open.  Then he stood in the light from the fridge and exposed it over and over - at least 36 times.   When I asked what he was going to do with 36 photos of the fridge he mumbled something about HDR.   ROTFL - I'm not sure what HDR means but the R is for Refrigerator."

By definition HDR means "High Dynamic Range".   HDR utilizes a series of photos taken at different exposures and reassembles them into a photograph that has more detail than any one of the individual photos.  

In the photo above, I photographed my refrigerator with an open door.  I made it more challenging by turning off every other light in the house.  Without using HDR, I would have a choice with detail in the highlights or details in the shadows but not both.  As you can see, HDR was able to capture shadow and highlight details in the same image.

Canon's Series 1 cameras can be set to take a bracketed set of 7 images.  The difference between exposures can be as little as 1/3 stop to well over a stop.  Canon deliberately cripples their other SLRs by limiting them to a bracketed set of 3 exposures.  One of the reasons for this test to see how much a smaller set of bracketed images will degrade the results.

I took a lot of photos - every 1/3 stop for 12 stops.  There were a total of 36 images.  I wanted to see what difference the number of exposures would make in the results.  

The first thing that I learned was that Photomatrix could not handle 36 exposures - at least not on my PC.  It failed with 18 exposures as well  I assembled HDR images that were 3 exposures (1 stop) up to 10 (3 1/3 stops) exposures apart.  Photomatix Pro has several default settings - I made images with the 'Photographic' and 'Painterly' settings.  

The image above was made with the Photographic setting.  The image below was made with the Painterly setting.  If you compare the two, you will see that the Painterly setting has more details in both the highlights and shadows.  Keep in mind that I used default settings.  Photomatix Pro has many other adjustments I could have used to improve my results.

It is possible to simulate HDR using a single exposure.  I processed each of the 36 exposures and chose the one with the best results.    In the image below, the top exposure is a highlight detail of the best of the pseudo-HDR images.  The bottom image is highlights using HDR with multiple exposures. 

The image below shows a shadow area in both images.  The pseudo-HDR image is on top and has much more grain and little detail.

When I evaluated the results I expected the images with exposures 1 top apart to be better than images that were 1 2/3,  2 2/3 and 3 1/3 stops apart.  I was shocked at how similar they looked.  In the 'Photographic' examples below, the top left image is bracketed at 3 1/3  stops and the image on the top right is bracketed at 1 stop.  The bottom left is 1 2/3 stops and the bottom right is 2 1/3 stops.

The image below used Photomatix Pro 'Painterly' setting.   As before, the top left image is bracketed at 3 1/3  stops and the image on the top right is bracketed at 1 stop.  The bottom left is 1 2/3 stops and the bottom right is 2 1/3 stops.  Once again, the results are very similar.

There were some problems as the dynamic range increased between exposures.  Compare the apples in the top image (5 stops apart) with those in the bottom image (2 stops apart)

The Bottom Line

I learned that for this subject, I needed an exposure that captured detail in the highlight and an exposure that captured details in the shadows.  The number of exposures in-between wasn't as important as I thought.  I certainly didn't need more than 7.   If I'm very careful, three may be enough much of the time.

I also learned the pseudo-HDR can be tried in desperation but will not deliver much improvement.

Finally, I demonstrated that HDR was able to produce satisfactory results in spite of the extremely difficult available light.  The only way that I could have solved this problem without HDR would have been to expose for the highlight details and use artificial lights to reduce the contrast in the shadows.