Digital sunbursts - the saga continues

I have no trouble with sunbursts but hey Thats one of the advantages of FILM. Mark

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Come on then, Mark. Put your money where your mouth is. Let's see a couple!

Alex

Can anyone direct me as to where I can get some circular neutral density filters for my 10-22 (77mm)? Not the one's from Berkley as they've yet to come out. I'm having trouble locating any of them online.

Hi Laz,

B & H has a crapload of them - I don't have a direct link to the ND filters page there, but I do have it at work. I'll post it on Monday. Hard, soft, glass, resin, circular and threaded, square cokin mount, etc.

OK, hereya go - 77mm threaded Heliopan:

1 Stop: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...u=101235&is=REG

2 Stop: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller...u=101236&is=REG

Most grad neutral density filters are rectangluar and ment to be mounted so that they can slide back and forth on the lens, depending on where the horizon is located in the frame. Might be something to consider for your split shots Laz.

Cheers

James

Might be something to consider for your split shots Laz.

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Shhh!! Don't say it sooo loud. You're giving away all my secrets. Good thing no one knows about my special chant to the split shot Gods before I take a photo!

These filters you mentioned are squared, no? I'm looking for a circular one like the one in Wetpixel news posting. I've been staring at this PC way too long today and I can't find them on B&H.

No Laz, the ones James has linked to above are 77mm diameter circular threaded, as shown in the Backscatter equipment. The clever thing Berkely has done is use a zoom collar to rotate the ND filter to the position needed, rather than being stuck with a single orientation.

By the way, if there is a custom filter you want made, such as a split dioptre+ND combo, you should contact the nice people at Singh-Ray Filters. They will custom make filters to your specifications at very high quality. You could get them to make split ND's in 77mm ring mounts that have the border at 1/4 into the frame rather than half way, for instance.

Fantastic! Thanks for the info James and Craig. I appreciate it.

Fun stuff, shot on film.

mpo

www.mpostock.com

www.batfishbooks.com

I forgot these two.

rgds,

mpo

www.mpostock.com

www.batfishbooks.com

To re-ignite the rant over the poor dynamic highlight range of digital cameras, here's an frank and honest piece from a land photographer as to why, and how to overcome it, although Alex has already given us tips on underexposing..

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/fixing-dynamic-range.htm

Marcus - that article is dangerous. He states, "Hackers probably would mess with RAW," as a mysterious alterhative to underexposing by two stops, but every serious photographer should be shooting in RAW these days, and there is simply no reason to be shooting in JPG unless you have storage, buffer, or assignment constraints.

You will ruin your image if you underexpose by two stops.

In the worst case (if you are afraid of the RAW workflow, as so many people I've met are), you can just batch convert everything to JPG, and you're right back to where you would have been if you had shot JPG in the first place.

Also, with cheaper cameras (D100) low light digital noise is a biotch to deal with once the image is created. I just got back from Detroit where I shot some houses in Greenfield Village. To get the nice colors in the sky, including whites, I stepped down the exposure. However, I got more noise in the sky as a result when compared to a proper exposure. Even in RAW, you can't rid yourself of noise. The more you try (noice reduction in PS) and tweak to get the image to look right the more you degrate the quality of the image.

But I concur that it is very frustrating using the D100 (or any other camera) in low light or just when I want to be creative with my lighting. There ain't much flexibility in exposure with opposing ends of DR.

Joe

Hi Eric

Agree the article might be dangerous if taken at face value, but I know Ken..he's really into simplification and shoots in JPG. And he's a land photographer whose main camera is the D70. But there is some interest in what he says about digital cameras being not able to capture highlights simply because of software designed by engineers, not artists (or underwater photographers!) because of commercial pressures (noise/numbers/charts) and all it would take is a firmware revision/software hack.

Of course I shoot in RAW. Also, the subject of this topic is getting sunbursts on digital. Mr Mustard, in his earlier posts, alluded to underexposing and then post-processing to control the sunburst. I also find this from my experience.

I've also been using Craig Jone's green and magenta filtering scheme and I think it helps. I played around with the histogram of selected areas around the sunball. The sharp turquoise ring in the photo Alex labelled "yuk" at the begining of the thread is cause by having both green and blue channels clipped while the red is still ramping up. Comparing it to my turtle shot below taken with a green filter over the lens, while  I think this one is also a little over exposed, the green channel is still varing close to the white area and the transition from blue to turquoise to white is not as sharp.

First time reading the whole thread on digital sunbursts. Noticed a reference to Craig Jone's technique for capturing digfital sunburst mentioned in the above quote.

Herb, can you elaborate on the physical aspects of this technique.

Any pointers in the right direction for more information on this technique would be greatly appreciated also.

thanks,

After reading all these threads, I am still a bit confused. I am not sure what is considered a good sunball? I assume that when possible, you would want sunball with lots of ray and is mostly white with not lots of blue fringe!

Is this correct? Here is a sample from my recent trip, not the greatest picture, viz was kind of crappy.

10.5mm, iso100, 1/80, F22 . Unfortunately since I only had a few seconds during the quick swim by barracudas, the position of the aparture knob was just easier for me to adjust quickly.

The picture was then manipulated a bit more with level, brightness/contrast and shadow/highlight and that's about it.

First time reading the whole thread on digital sunbursts. Noticed a reference to Craig Jone's technique for capturing digfital sunburst mentioned in the above quote.

 

Herb, can you elaborate on the physical aspects of this technique. 

 

Any pointers in the right direction for more information on this technique would be greatly appreciated also.

thanks,

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Use a magenta filter on the lens and compensating green filter on the strobes so that things illuminated by the strobes have the correct color balance.

Do a search on this site for Craig's posts.

After reading all these threads, I am still a bit confused. I am not sure what is considered a good sunball? I assume that when possible, you would want sunball with lots of ray and is mostly white with not lots of blue fringe!

Is this correct? Here is a sample from my recent trip, not the greatest picture, viz was kind of crappy.

 

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It's easier to say what's bad. The most common problem is the unnatural looking sharp cyan ring around the sun. It's caused by clipping of the blue and green channels in digital cameras. Film has more gradual cut off.

Thanks Herb. Will look for Craig's posts right away.

This may sound like a dumb question but I haven't seen it stated or at least it has not been talked about much in regard to what meetering mode are you guys using and how do they affect your sunbursts. If in full manual mode I don't even know for sure (yet) can you use 3d and spot in most cameras or does it default to centerweight? The Auto Exposure lock feature could also be a tool that may help for speed. I would like to see more feedback on camera settings that seem to work under most condtions that would give me a good starting point to take the 1st few shots and adjust from there. Alex's three picture shutter speed examples were great. (Wish I could go to 1/500). These pics are a good example of not missing TTL when there is a front subject to light with the sun.

Accurate exposure metering is of course an essential part of any sort of photography, but will not help deal with the clipped highlights produced when shooting into the sun from underwater using a digital camera. The burnout and unwanted blocky fringes are produced because the digital system has a linear reponse to light intensity unlike film. Film not only has a non-linear response but can also 'suffer' from reciprocity failure at high light intensities, which may allow it to record more information than it should be really capable of (and sometimes this can lead to increased density in highlights too). Raw converters can also handle the 'blown' data from extreme overexposure strangely, sometimes producing spurious colour.

What we are seeing are two different mechanisms at work which produce different interpretations from the same input data when subjected to extreme conditions.

Depending on your point of view this may be a disadvantage of the digital system compared to film, OR if you want to be positive about it, you might think that we need to reconsider such images in terms of what we class as acceptable.

Unless of course someone develops a digital capture device with an astonishingly high dynamic range!

I understand what you saying.... I should have been more to the point. As far as getting acceptable or at least more consistent results does a specific metering mode seem to help/hurt.