DSLR Photography Forum

This one was a completely different experience for me. I am not religious but I have wanted to photograph interior of this Cathedral in Adelaide for some time. I have put it off until now because I always felt that I would be disturbing people or feel like an intruder. However I rang the Cathedral the day before and they were very inviting - I was told a good time of day when there would not be many people and the light would be nice. Even when I walked in the big doors with my camera and tripod the greeted me and showed me around.

I took many shots but this one was the perspective I was aiming for (having seen other images from the Cathedral). The light was quite challenging. There were alot of clouds moving past the sun outside and the shadows within the building were changing dramatically.
This is a HDR image from 5 bracketed RAW images. The mapped HDR image (photomatix) appeared overdone and it has been edited closer to the middle exposure in photoshop.



All comments, critique and suggestions welcome.
Shane

Wow, this is great! I love the cold subtle colours, and there's certainly a lot of detail to look at.

Nice one smarti! Lovely shot.
Good application of HDR too... I can appreciate the need for HDR in these circumstances but you managed to avoid that telltale "HDR look" very well.

My dad (who is also not religious) used to take some of his drawing classes from the Hobart Art School into St David's Cathedral (http://www.stdavidscathedralhobart.org) because there are so many interesting things to draw there, and like you he would comment on how welcome they were always made to feel.

I like it very much.

the slightly darker parts, bottom and top, seem just perfect to me.
In the walls I am missing a little bit more detail, wonder if that could be done?
This comes from someone who has no clue about HDR

Uli

wulinka Wrote:I like it very much.

the slightly darker parts, bottom and top, seem just perfect to me.
In the walls I am missing a little bit more detail, wonder if that could be done?
This comes from someone who has no clue about HDR

Uli

I agree with you Uli - The large bright circle of light on the pillars to the right of the door way still bothers me. When the clouds moved the sun would shine directly through the windows at top left. I've still got a few still to process too.

The last few times I have worked with photomatix I haven't been too happy with the result because I have to work again with the originals, I don't know what happened with the program. I think the first version did better job or I need more practice...

I admire very much your simmetry in this picture, I like very much the light and the contrast in the overall image.

However detail I think you want to show as you took 5 exposures is not visible, the highlight in the door is hard to me, possible a bit more of detail in the stained glass window wouldn't hurt either, here I am not really sure as in this resolution is difficult to see how much detail you have and if it is really needed or it is enough. Texture in the pillars and a bit more of detail in the furniture in the bottom right also would be fine.

With all the information you have I would give a try and work with lab color. Why lab color? Because you can have all your exposures in one image and go masking highlights in the +exposures and shadows in the -exposures via lightness channel and blend them manually in the 0 exposure with different opacity percentage. And still have the chance to play with a soft brush in every mask to leave out what is not needed and work with different blending modes too.

At the end when you are happy you still can work your contrast if it is needed with curves.

In my cathedral pictures I posted in the Architecture Assignment I didn't work with hdr and I just work with one raw. I was a bit sad because it would have been better to have more exposures but I didn't have my tripod with me, but still the result from one raw file was not so bad. I am sure you can do much better.

This pretty much wins. I've been meaning to get some shots of some of Brisbane's cathedrals for some time now but I have failed at getting around to it.

Very nice...and some really helpful stuff all the way down really.
You didn't say by how much you bracketed: 5 frames...but over what sort of dynamic range?
I think you've done really well too: if you'd have tried to be perfect and get a perfectly exposed area of everything, it would look unreal and over-HDR'd: the subtleties seem to work better when we can see that, yes, an area is overexposed(for example) BUT only enough to prevent highlights from blowing out.
That said, the bits that are white-out are perfectly OK: it would look a bit mad if the outdoors had the same tones and treatment as the interior.
The light patches: they add realism really! I can understand that to you they might be bothersome...but this is then chance to soften the edges, add a bit of diffusion and even soften further with a white brush,....this way, you get the "halation" look of film emulsion!

I'm not saying there's comparison here, but this is the effect that I tried to get here: I'd blown out the highlights, thought that a Photomatix HDR would look naff, so added diffusion and a very low intensity white brush to soften the edges further.
Sorry, not wishing to hijack, just to make the point that what can start off "bothersome" can be made into "arty and deliberate"!

Hey Zig,

I like this patch of color!! good idea, not too much.

Uli (happy happy...)

Thanks to everyone for you helpful comments.

Irma - I tried to bring back the details in the stained glass at the top - but when I did that it looked very dark compared to the blown out doorway. I much prefer the blown out whites in the doorway. Thanks to the link you your cathedral images - I was amazed that yours were one raw exposure - great work. Thanks for the suggestion of editing the lightness channel in LAB. I haven't tried this before so I'll give it a go...

Zig - Because of the extreme light conditions I used (-4, -2, 0, 2, 4).
This is the resulting photomatix tonemapped image:



In this case I took the middle exposure and placed it on top of the tone mapped image above - then played with the opacity until I was satisfied that it was realistic. I have lost alot of highlight and shadow info in doing this but I'd prefer it doesn't look like an overdone HDR.

I also light your idea of diffusing and brushing the whites rather than trying to recover them.
Lots of great feedback on this one - Thanks everyone!

That is like autumn colours drifting in. I prefer that one over the first.

Ah! This now gives scope for all manner of treatments, though:
1.Pressing the Highlights and Shadows button in CS2 and seeing what happens;. or,
2. duplicating as a layer ,set to Overlay, then invert, then add 250 max gaussian blur...then fade the layer back in till desired contrast: contrast masking in other words;
3. desaturating a touch, then doding in highlights and burning in shadows;
The "overdone HDR" can then be seen as just another point in the whole process: there's a whole lot of scope, now having rescued such an amount of detail.
Wow: that is an impressive range there: I wonder if actually restricting the range to 3 or 4 stops would give better "realism"..?
Stunning stuff, mind.

Hello Smarti,

You fooled me. I was about to suggest the use of HDR, only to find out that you did. Something went funny with my calibrated monitor and it seems to have reverted to the previous settings. Everything suddenly looks darker and contrastier than it should, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Like you, I am not religeous, but I find that many HDR photos of churches do not respect the original lighting, which is essential I think to give churches this spiritual feel. Shadows are very important in the photos of interior of churches and I think you deserve a lot of credit for preserving them. On the "need to improve" side, I would pay attention to the blown entrance to the church and other smaller areas. Perhaps more importantly, as much as I like the presence of shadows, I would lighten them a bit, particularly in the roof. The colour has this "HDR look". At this point, I do not have a lot of experience with HDR, but I would see if you could bring about more pleasing and naural colour. Overall, I really like the photo. I would consider making some changes and perhaps resubmitting. DP.