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Well I've borrowed a tripod and had my first go at a waterfall.




Image data is: D70, 18-70 kit lens at 22mm, f5.6, 2.5 secs, manual mode, spot metered.

A number of shots had the flowing white water badly over exposed and this was about the best of them. Can anyone please help me with a technique that I can use to stop the white water from getting over exposed but won't darken the whole shot. This is my first attempt at raw and I spent a while playing around with the raw data but can't seem to get a compromise between washed out white water and shadows on some of the other shots.

Cheers
John

Hi John
I like the shot, particularly the log in the bottom right corner that leads you into the picture.

Which part of the scene did you expose to (using spot metering) ??

You could maybe try the aperture at something around f8 for a slightly crisper shot, but I like it. Great first attempt !

Perhaps posting the photo a little larger will have more impact as well ??

G'day John,

If this is just the one exposure then you've done better than I have. Waterfalls can have a wide dynamic range so I've ended up taking two exposures and blending them in PS.

Good ol' RAW is very handy for exposure latitude tho huh...

Dave and Mudder, thanks for your comments. I metered about 1/3 way in from left hand side.

As for posting larger pics, I'm having a bit of trouble.
I'm using pixspot and I uploaded this as a 800pix X 600pix shot, quality 8, 198KB up to pixspot, but when I view it here, it's 500 X 400 and 56KB.
I think it's pixspot that's downsizing the shot. Not sure what to do about it.

Mudder, don't know how to blend two shots in PS yet. Got to learn that soon though.

Cheers
John

Im still blown away that you guys get two, three, four shots and blend them together thats amazing in my books

johnd wrote:... Mudder, don't know how to blend two shots in PS yet. Got to learn that soon though.

Cheers
John

G'day mate,

Just about to bugger off to watch the grand prix but blending is really easy in PS... This might sound like a lengthy procedure but once you've done it a couple of times it lierally only takes a few seconds and it takes care of the tricky areas like foliage etc...

1) open both the low exposure and high exposure images,
2) make the low exposure image current
3) ^A (to select all) then ^C (to copy to buffer)
4) make high exposure image current
5) ^V to paste the low exposure image into the high exposure image
6) Go to layers, make sure the pasted low exposure layer is current
then make a mask but clicking the icon that looks like a camera from
the front (didn't know how else to explain it...)
7) Alt-click on the mask window (the white window in the pasted layer
pallette) This should give you a white screen/image
8 ) Then paste into the white screen, this should give you a black and
white image
9) Then just click on the background layer to make it current and hey
presto! Merged exposures...
10) Then you can make the mask layer current and hide the background
and clean up erasing any bits of the mask you don't want... PS. Edit: forgot to add, you can do this with the one shot too, by using different levels of exposure to the same image and saving as two images for overlay... Assuming the highlights aren't blown to unrecoverable levels

johnd wrote:
As for posting larger pics, I'm having a bit of trouble.
I'm using pixspot and I uploaded this as a 800pix X 600pix shot, quality 8, 198KB up to pixspot, but when I view it here, it's 500 X 400 and 56KB.
I think it's pixspot that's downsizing the shot. Not sure what to do about it.

When you go to your pixspot gallery and click on the thumbnail, it opens up the photo....but usually you can click on the photo to see it at it's original size. From here is where I always take the URL link from.

Not sure if this is the reason you're photos are not showing up full size in here. Mine always do.

Just about to bugger off to watch the grand prix but blending is really easy

There's no grand prix tonight is there?

Andrew, thanks for the suggestion.
I'll try this tonight by making 2 shots from the 1 raw shot. One with the shadows brighter which will burn out the highlights and one the other way.

I'll let you know how I go.

Dave, yes I'm using the url from the photo not the thumbnail. But I think the problem is when I first upload it to pixspot.
It was 800X600 (198KB) on my PC, but after uploading, it was 500X400 (56KB).
When I tried to upload anything much larger, I got an upload error - too many pixels or something.
I'll have a play round and see what I come up with.

Cheers
John

johnd wrote:Dave, yes I'm using the url from the photo not the thumbnail. But I think the problem is when I first upload it to pixspot.
It was 800X600 (198KB) on my PC, but after uploading, it was 500X400 (56KB).
When I tried to upload anything much larger, I got an upload error - too many pixels or something.
I'll have a play round and see what I come up with.

Cheers
John

Hmmm....that's interesting as I typically upload photos that are 920 x 652 and they seem to work fine.
I know sometimes when the picture is larger, it does display smaller, but if you click on the image when it opens up in a new window, it then opens up again to the full size(at least it does when I use it).

Anyone else having similar problems ??

Dave, you're a genius. The second click to open it up full size did the trick.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers
John

johnd wrote:Dave, you're a genius. The second click to open it up full size did the trick.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers
John

no problems...glad I could help