Ride Along Rome

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! Another sunny day in Hohenfels, as we ride out the summer, brings us warmth and brightness.

Today we’re going out on a ride along shot. So, get ready to leave Hohenfels behind, and take a trip through time to ancient Rome.

First, here’s the shot from the camera.


ISO 160, f/8, 1/100, Canon EOS 7D
This is washed out and appears to be a failure, but when you shoot for your final result, this is only half the image.

It’s not very pretty, but this goes to show you how you create an image with your vision. I shot it this way fully expecting to get to the final image with some editing in Canon’s DPP. I didn’t use Photoshop or any other program; everything was done in RAW conversion.

We were in Rome a couple weeks ago on a wonderful family vacation with some great friends. The whole family has always wanted to go there, so off we went.

Of course, the Colosseum was a mandatory stop, especially for me. This was shot during our tour, including the underground portion. I got quite a few shots inside, but wanted something that would leave the viewer wondering. I also wanted something that showed its incredible nature, without getting the usual fare.

I was shooting film and digital that day, so used my 7D to meter for both cameras. The film was Kodak Portra 160, which is a color film with a box speed of ISO 160. I metered for the lower wall. I wasn’t concerned about the sky blowing out, as the important details in the tunnel and brick were needed. By metering the lower mid values and exposing for M-1, shadow detail was preserved, as were the mids.

They hardly seem the same. I edited the image by setting my white balance to color temperature. This allows for some contrast control in the final image. The reason color temperature and white balance can be used to control contrast is that our color levels will be adjusted under the RGB tab. After setting the color balance, and setting the exposure to –2/3 stop and adjusting the contrast, I moved over to the RGB tab.

When converting this way, the image starts looking worse as you progress. It simulates color filters. The beauty of digital is that you can simulate different colors for different levels. By increasing the levels of red in the shadows, pretty much removing blue, and giving green a slight decrease, the image looked wonky. Of course, it starts to come together when you slide your saturation under the RGB tab to 0. A little dip of the luminance curve and it’s back to Raw.

By adjusting the color balance back toward blue, you can darken the image. You also increase contrast. Then, once you’re happy with those adjustments, under the RAW tab’s saturation you can further tweak your contrast. With the red bricks, green spots of grass, and blue sky the image was quite suited to this type of conversion. Another suitable type is when one color dominates several neutral or contrasting colors.

Here’s a screen shot of the 2 tabs and the final settings. Shooting RAW gives you so many options to capture shots that bring together your camera work and your vision.


Here is the RGB tab and the color adjustments.


And here we see the RAW tab in Canon DPP

Finally, here is the finished image.


ISO 160, f/8, 1/100
Colosseum Section, Rome, finished. The increased contrast from the color temperature brings detail into the bright stones topping the section. It also makes the entry dark and increases overall image interest.

The tunnel entrance, in dark mysterious shadows, referred to as the vomitorium, allowed for rapid exit during an emergency. The little arches below were entryways into another seating area. The site had a capacity of 50,000 spectators, and even though this small section doesn’t show the full capacity, it does give an impression of the scale and architectural marvel. I also shot a back up to be in color, which pops for the contrast between the sky and walls.

Here’s hoping you finish the week with some great shots. Hohenfels is full of opportunities for photography, and this weekend may be the perfect time to get something in your camera!

Please feel free to share your photos on our Faceboook page. Everyone here would love the chance to see your work! Is there anything you’d like to see here? Do you have a question? Share your thoughts here or at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too! Don't forget, we're on Google+, too!

Converting Your Image

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! I hope everyone is faring well as press into the week.

Today we’re going to go over a simple, but interesting way to convert your photo to black and white.

As we all know, sometimes color can change the way an image feels. It can take a moody photo and make it seem wrong or out of place. It can distract from the subject and take away from the beauty of the light. There are many reasons for shooting, or converting to, black and white. For this post, we’re going to do something that takes our shot to a better place.

This is the image we’re working on. I’m using Corel’s Paintshop Pro Photo X4, but the concept is the same in Photoshop, Lightroom, or Gimp.


ISO 6400, f/3.4, 1/15
Looking into the Cathedral. The scene was beautiful, yet the image lacks some pop. We'll fix that!

I shot this photo inside the Dom in Regensburg. The beautiful Gothic architecture and art inside this cathedral seem best suited for black and white, and seem quite garish in color. The color temperature also becomes an issue when shooting at high ISOs, although I photographed this with the intent of making it black and white.

Once we’ve converted our image and opened it in our application of choice, we’re going to separate the image into red, green, and blue layers. There we’ll lighten and darken the different layers to our desired levels using curves and levels, and remove the noise. For this image, I slightly decreased the red and blue layers, while only dodging the green along the pipes of the organ. Once you’re content with your adjustments, combine the layers into a new image. For this shot, I slightly darkened the red layer, darkened the blue layer quite a bit, and dodged the pipes of the organ to increase the levels to offset the overall decrease in brightness. The finished combination now looks rather odd, and has some tinting/toning in it.


This is our image after splitting the color channels and recombining them. Notice the green tint on the pipes.

Our next step is to split the image again, this time to hue, saturation, and lightness layers. You can discard the hue and saturation layers, as we will now use the lightness layer for our final canvas. For this image, I adjusted the levels, performed a minor curves adjustment, and increased sharpness. I chose to over-sharpen, using a radius of 1.00, as I would be softening the noisy area under the arch, and applying an edge preserving smooth filter.


Almost finished, a few tweaks and we're there.

The finished result, while no masterpiece, is rewarding. It leaves you with a sense of place and scale that the color version tends to minimize. The chiaroscuro also seems quite well suited to the Gothic cathedral.


And here we go. I think this really brings out the mood and scale of the Dom. Its incredible Gothic architecture and art are magnificent.

Well, that’s one way you can do it. This is by no means the only way. You can also adjust color channels without splitting the image, and then desaturate the image. There are as many ways to convert your image as there are folks playing around to figure out what works best for their photo. One of the biggest keys, though, is color contrast and levels. Getting that where you want it can lead to some very nice results!

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Please feel free to share your photos on our Faceboook page. Everyone here would love the chance to see your work! Is there anything you’d like to see here? Do you have a question? Share your thoughts here or at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too! Don't forget, we're on Google+, too!

Shooting the Spires

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! Welcome to another Monday. I hope your week is off to a great start.

Yesterday I posted the following photo, along with a message that I would post more about it tonight.


ISO 125, f/16, 1/125, 85mm.
This shot is straight from the camera. I applied some sharpening to retain detail during the resize, but no other edits were made. By placing the spires to the right, and using the clouds to create interest in otherwise negative space, mood is created and enhanced.

This photo was made in Regensburg on Saturday. Dachauplatz has a nice garage, located to be within a few minutes walk to just about anywhere in the old part of town. Parking on the roof and scanning the other roofs, this scene just begged to be photographed. The sky was stormy looking, and clouds appeared ominously ready to ruin our afternoon. I metered for the bright clouds and added about 2/3-stop exposure. This left the dark clouds about 1 and 1/3 stop below the meter reading on my 7D.

Composing to minimize intrusion of the garage and several other out of place structures, I made 2 shots about 1/3 stop apart. The mood of the image captured the light, sky, and feeling of that dreadful appearing scene.

After getting the image onto the computer, I decreased the exposure 1/2 stop, brought in the shadow levels to just right of the edge, the highlight levels a slight amount, set contrast to 3, and shadows to 2. I set the color temperature to 3500K, and adjusted the curves for maximum impact. Under the RGB tab, I reduced saturation to 0 and tweaked the curves again to create a balanced scene, resulting in the following B&W image. I applied maximum sharpening on both tabs, and felt pretty good about this image.

The rest of that afternoon was incredibly nice, the weather was on our side, we enjoyed some nice family time, and of course, some ice cream at Eis am Dom, in the Domplatz. Of course, no visit to Regensburg can be complete without a visit to Fotohaus Zacharias. I got to see their latest offerings in the old camera department and pick up some 120 film. They always have so much to choose from. I get lost dreaming about the cameras! I saw a couple old time large format cameras that were incredible. It’s definitely a place to spend a couple hours just looking!


Here's the finished version. It looks old fashioned in monochrome, and the mood is enhanced without color to distract. Converting images can often be a very simple process when you shoot for a mood.

Well, that about wraps it up for today, but I’ll be back with some more photos from the trip and techniques to get that B&W image you visualized!

Did you get any exciting images this weekend? If so, feel free to share them on our Faceboook page. Is there anything you’d like to see here? Do you have a question? Share your thoughts here or at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too! Don't forget, we're on Google+, too!

Ride Along Shot: High...

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! Welcoming Tuesday, Hohenfels finds a nice day breaking out and greeting us back.

Let’s visit Regensburg for another ride along shot. This time we’re going to look at a shot taken on film in the old part of town.

Here’s the image.

ISO 100 Agfa APX100, f/8, 1/50, 50mm
A shop window in Regensburg's old town.

This was taken outside one of the many little shops lining the square, and not far from the Dom, or cathedral. I was immediately attracted to the material, old boxes, wreaths, and some cool roses. Throw in the bottles and glassware in the window, and it really seemed like a “must have” shot.

Metering from the white portion in the bottom right window gave too little exposure, so I shot at M+3 and developed for N. This left white zone to about M+3 and leaves a nice tonal range. This also gives us a nice high key image, with a very suitable contrast, and detail in the brightest parts. The reflections in the windows could have been removed with a CP filter, but I would lose the high key effect of the light reflecting around the scene.

The meter gave me f/16 at 1/100. I think this was shot on Agfa APX100 film. I shot with a 50mm f/1.8 prime, as I did the entire day. The final exposure was f/8 and 1/50, with an ISO of 100. I didn’t want to go slower, as the old cameras had no IS, and any wider would have left the DOF inadequate to express what I had envisioned. The sun was out, it was mid-day, and the weather had warmed up a little that day. It was still snowing back in Hohenfels, which was a bit surprising as I got off the train.

After scanning the negative, editing was most certainly required. The sharpness was quite nearly gone, the contrast had come down, and the whites were nearly blown. By applying curves in an inverse S and adjusting the levels to bring down the shadows, and raise the midtones and highlights, I was nearly complete. The next step was to reduce noise and apply an unsharp mask at about 3px radius, 90 strength, and 2 clipping.

The final image grew on me. At first, being satisfied with the image, it was ok. After editing and revisiting the image several times, I realize it had become something I really liked. It showed that the system of metering for the highlights when you plan an image to be presented digitally, can lead to some really nice results.

By exposing on the plus side, it brought out some detail in the shadows, allowing just enough to bring the eye to them in the middle of the brights. Our eyes are generally drawn to the brightest part of a scene first, which is why we often keep our subject 1/3 to 1 stop brighter that the surrounding. In cases like this, it sets our darks apart and brings focus to the play between shadow and light.

I hope I haven’t bored you too much! Enjoy the rest of a lovely evening, maybe using this time to get some blue or golden hour shots in. Take care and keep shooting.

Don’t forget to post any of your images you’d like to see here at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too! Don't forget, we're on Google+, too!

Ride Along: Golden Sky

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place!

Today we’re going on another ride along. This one isn’t too far from home, so we’ll keep it short.

While exploring the backside of Hohenfels Sunday, I stumbled upon this scene and knew it was something I wanted to keep.


ISO 400, f/22, 1/50, 35mm, Canon EOS 7D
The sun dipping slowly toward night's rest and renewal.

Going over the hill from Hohenfels proper toward Raitenbuch, you come across a small country lane meandering through the fields. Having been down this road before, I knew there were some nice scenics waiting to reward the one bringing them home. There is a tiny little chapel between 2 giant trees there, with some magnificent views of the hills around.

The shot was easy to visualize, I came up with several in fact. Composition was envisioned to include the colors all around as one the key elements. The sky was partly cloudy, with some nice golden glow from the sun hanging around the think veneer of sheeted clouds, and a nice blue in the areas without cloud cover.

I arrived moments before the color really started coming out. I took several shots, hoping to see something I could work with. I included the trees and the chapel in several, but liked this one for matching the closest to what I visualized.

I metered off the tree with the Gossen Sixtomat, at ISO 400. Giving the tree a –2-stop exposure from the meter would have washed out the sky and left the color flat and a bit comical. Metering the tree for –3 stops and the grass for about –2 stops from middle gray, meant I could shoot at f/22, which was part of getting the sun to streak in a nice little starburst. I was also able to shoot at 1/50, which limited the streaking to just a couple rays coming lightly over the hills in the distance through the clouds.

Getting it into Canon DPP, or the digital darkroom, added some magic. Canon has some “Picture Styles” for their application that come standard, allowing for the most common edits to color and contrast to be quickly applied. My first thought was Landscape, but that left the gold too vague and muddled. Having downloaded several other styles from Canon’s site, I settled on Autumn Hues for the picture style. This softened the contrast between the sun and the hills; it also made for some nice separation of the golds, oranges, and reds in the sky. I adjusted my levels, crushing them in some for clarity.

After that, I set the color temperature to about 6000K, which brought the color in line with the lighting hues. Increasing the contrast to +1 and the shadows to +2 added to the glow around the hills and tree, while allowing the levels to hold up throughout the image, including the separation in the distant hills. The last adjustment was to take saturation down –1 and sharpen.

The car coming up the road in the middle ground adds a nice little reference point for the viewer to pause. That was a lucky little bit of happenstance. I liked the lights as he was approaching and shot quickly to include his headlights. This photo captures what I visualized, and expresses the joy one gets when out looking for shots, especially when you find one that works for your vision. Shooting with a vision can make for some interesting stuff, knowing what tools you have at your disposal to make your vision a reality makes easier work of it!

Check out Canon’s site and download some of their picture styles. You’ll see some stuff that probably doesn’t appeal to you, at least I did, but you’ll also find something that does. I’m certain Nikon and other companies have something similar, if not, you can make your own in whatever app is your digital darkroom! Exposure and visualization start your image on its journey; your level controls and tools in software bring it home. Using them all together can make something that brings others to that same place with you!

Take care and enjoy your day!

Don’t forget to post any of your images you’d like to see here at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too! Don't forget, we're on Google+, too!

Editing For Pre-Exposure?

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! I hope everyone is warm and well, and that you got the shot you wanted today!

Today we’re going to deal with an editing technique based on old film shooting. I know this was supposed to be another Around Hohenfels, but that didn’t quite pan out the way I had planned.

Back in the film days, you couldn’t change film speed mid roll. You also had some interesting things going on. Film often had a wider latitude for exposure errors, especially for overexposure, but even underexposing allowed film to still work out, if you knew how to make it. You could shoot with ISO 200 settings on ISO 100 film, and push the processing for ISO 200, and save the shots. There were several techniques for saving the shot, including push processing, pull processing, and pre-exposing. When shooting RAW format, most conversion applications, like Canon’s DPP, can be used to correct an exposure by up to 2 stops either direction. Using the exposure setting that way, though, you affect the entire image, not just certain areas. Using most image editing programs, you can dodge or burn areas to meet your needs, as well adjust your curves and levels. In fact, most applications have the common dark room tools, which is why they refer to them as a digital dark room.

Rather than discuss those choices at this time, we’ll address pre-exposure. I chose this topic, as most image applications don’t have a feature that allows that directly. Rather, you have to use a round about method to obtain similar results, and that’s what we’ll discuss today. Pre-exposing film allowed the photographer to bring out detail in deep shadows by adjusting them to higher levels or zones. By pre-exposing a hot, then shooting over that pre-exposed frame, light intensity could be raised. If you wish to bring out detail in zone 2 shadows, you could pre-expose for zone 1 or 2, then shoot for a correct overall exposure and get those elusive shadow features. You’d need to take a gray card or translucent plastic/glass, meter it exactly along your image axis, and set your exposure accordingly, then shoot the scene. You could push, pull, or otherwise develop according to your plans, and print the same. We’ll be simulating this technique. I’m going to use this image as an example.


ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/500, 55mm
The Passau Skyline!

First, select your image, and open it in your editor of choice. Whether you use Photoshop, GIMP, or Paintshop Pro, the basic are the same, but your application needs to support layers. Once your image is open, make a new layer, and select your color selection tool. Click on the shadows you wish to open up and increase the details. Before closing, look at the settings or options for that color and increase the values by the desired amount. For this image, I chose the trees in front of the church, which came out to R-7, G-7, B-7, L-7, and doubled them all to 14. This was still in zone 1, digitally speaking, but when combined at the end, allowed for a slight bump in the shadow detail.

With that being done and applied, select your bucket too and flood fill the new layer with that color. You should have something solid, in your selected color or tone. Set you blend mode to screen, and watch the magic start. All your levels will increase except the brightest areas. You will notice a decrease in contrast as well.

Decrease the new layer’s opacity until you have a set of results that are satisfactory. Now, select levels adjustment, and crush in the curves ever so slightly. This will increase your contrast, without removing too much detail from your shadows. You can apply a curves adjustment and a clarify adjustment if you desire. Now you should see something that is pleasing to your eye, and has more detail in the shadows.

In the days of film, you shot for the shadows, to preserve detail. This often meant slightly overexposing your shot, and printing to retain the detail in the highlights. By pre-exposing your film, you had a way to create more detail without giving any up on the other end. Because exposure was cumulative on multiple shots at the same frame, you could add light as needed. The reason for dark areas benefiting most, was that you added light uniformly across the image at the same level, but your exposure of the image was not uniform. Using just quick numbers to demonstrate, at level 2, when you add 2 units you double the level. At your highlights with say 100 units, you add 2 units and the results are almost unnoticeable due to the ratios. This works in digital the same way, when you select screen mode, you only lighten values lower then your selected pre-exposure layer. Although there is some small effect at slightly higher levels, it is less drastic. By varying the opacity of the layer, you can control the effect even more. Adding masking to allow only certain areas to be painted in gives you complete control!

Here is my final image. Not a large change, but enough to bring out some of the detail within the trees. This works best with images without a large amount of bright spots or too much contrast, but this image was useful. This shows you what a little bit of old time darkroom work on today’s technology can accomplish.


Same as above, with pre-exposure.

Well, that’s it for today. Keep shooting, keep seeing the light, and keep your love of our art going with frequent sessions behind the lens! Don’t forget to vote and to get your works in for this week’s theme!

Don’t forget to post any of your images you’d like to see here at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too! Don't forget, we're on Google+, too!

Rice? Sand? Nope, It's Film!

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! Well, so much for no snow here in Hohenfels.

As promised last night, here’s our post on editing your digital images for the film look. We’re going to be using GIMP with some script-fu plug-ins. Even though we’re assuming you use and have GIMP there are 2 things before we begin; 1- these concepts apply to Photoshop and Paint Shop as well, but may be called something else, and 2- choose an image you think would look good as a film shot, and let’s get ready.


ISO 125, f/4.5, 1/60, 53mm
We're going to start with this image. You can see the settings above. It was shot monochrome on the Canon EOS 7D, with a red filter applied and some very minor crushing of levels.

First, open GIMP. When it’s finished loading, select Open from the File menu. Navigate to your image and click Open. Once your image loads, right click on the layers palette and select Duplicate Layer. This is the layer we will be using as our background, which allows us to perform our edits without actually touching the pixels on the original image. Right click on your background and select Delete, leaving only the duplicate layer.

Right click on the duplicate layer and select New Layer. In the dialog box, Name your layer grain and select Transparency, then click OK. Make sure brush color is set for 50% gray, although darker shades will increase contrast and lighter shades will decrease it. I generally choose a darker shade to get an older style feel to the image, but the choice is up to your style and taste. Choose your Flood Fill tool, AKA Bucket Tool, and click inside the image area with your grain layer selected. You should see nothing but your selected color now. In the Mode drop down select Overlay. You can see your image now, although it will have some contrast changes.

Click on your filters menu. Select Noise, and then select Hurl. In the dialog box that appears, click the New Seed button, Then adjust your Randomization slide for about 10-15% and your repeat for 1-5. Then click OK. Your image now looks slightly contrasty and noisy, and quite unappealing. From the menu bar select Colors, then Hue-Saturation and decrease your lightness slightly and your saturation all the way down. Things are looking better, but it still needs some work. Go back to your filters menu and select Blur. From there, click Gaussian Blur. Set your radius to about 1-1.5 and click OK. The noise now looks like the grain on film, but we’re not done yet.

Next, select your background. Click on Script Fu in your menu and go to Sharpness. Select Sharper and finally click on High Pass Sharpen. Select your desired level of sharpening and click OK. You now have a new layer that is the sharpening level and looks like the lines from your original. Click the Eye Button to turn off your background.

Go back to the Colors menu and select Brightness-Contrast. I usually bring the brightness down, around 30 for most B&W photos, and increase the contrast to about 25, then click OK. Click the eye on your background layer again, turning it back on. You should be about right. The grain, contrast, and sharpness should be about what you’d expect from a general use film like ISO 200-400. If it’s too grainy, blur your noise layer in .25 pixel steps until it looks good. If your contrast is too high or low, adjust the brightness or transparency of your grain and sharpened layers.

And here's the final product. Although at this size, the grain isn't quite as prominent as it would be zoomed in, you can see the difference and the impact adding grain can have.


This is more film like, although not quite as contrasty as pushing a little more could make it. Higher contrast can make for some nice old time photos that bring people back in time.

It isn’t perfect, but with some practice, patience, and trial and error, you can get something that looks like real film. Photoshop has plug-ins to do, as does GIMP, but the results are more natural when done manually. One important thing to remember is to make sure you remove all saturation from your grain layer. If you don’t, you’ll end up with colored noise that has no resemblance to film grain.

I hope you're working on your shots for the theme! Have a great weekend and shoot that trophy photo you've always wanted!

Don’t forget to post any of your images you’d like to see here at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too!