Having spent a fair bit of time last week at the cottage on Long Point Lake (West of Elk Lake, Ontario) reading while waiting for breaks in the rain, I had been looking at the spare bed and its colourful classic quilt across the room and, with a fair bit of optimism, at the lake. I wanted a photo of the bedquilt with a natural-looking view out the window (what I saw, not what the camera was able to capture as best it could in a single frame) so I set up my gear to do a pair of shots each intended to provide a well-exposed shot of the interior in one case, and the outside world in the other with the intent of merging the best of each frame to recreate as best I could, what I saw. The result seen here gives what I feel is an pretty accurate representation of the scene. And, of course, the quilt has a fair bit of red in it, so, Red Rule applies – JW
Date Taken: 2018-09-04
Tech Details:
This is a composite of two images shot from the same vantage point but differing in exposure by a factor of 5.3 to ensure the bedquilt was properly exposed in one frame and the view out the window was properly exposed in the other. In post-processing layer masks were used to enable the combining of the two images and yield a look that closely resembled my perception of the scene, something the camera was unable to do in a single shot.
The two images were taken using a tripod-mounted Nikon D7100 fitted with an AF-S DX Nikkor 12-24 f/4.0 lense set to 13mm, ISO100, Auto WB, Aperture priority mode, f/5.6, 1/15 sec for the interior exposure and 1/80 sec for the exterior exposure, both with an EV-0.33 exposure bias. PP in free Open Source RAWTherapee from Nikon RAW/NEF source file: set final image size to 9000×6000, adjust exposure compensation for each to optimize the tonality of each of the intended uses, adjust contrast and Chromaticity of each in L-A-B mode, set colour balance to 5300K for both, adjust/increase Vibrance slightly for each frame, sharpen (edges only), save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: load the two frames as layers, top layer for the exterior frame and the bottom layer for the interior frame, add a black/transparent layer mask to the top/exterior layer and then using a soft-edged brush with white paint to paint in the edges of the window glass followed by using a larger hard-edged brush to paint in the areas inside the edge areas, use the tone curve tool to individually optimize the look of each layer, adjust contrast, colour balance and saturation of each layer as appropriate, use a very large soft-edged brush with the dodge-burn tool to slightly brighten the highlight areas of the wood in the left wall as well as the floor below the window, sharpen the interior layer only (the exterior layer is out-of-focus so little point in sharpening noise/grain), create new working layer from visible result, save, scale image to 6000px wide, sharpen slightly, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 2048 wide for posting online, sharpen slightly, save.
