Bracketing and merging

Merlin5

Merlin5

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Lee
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Hi guys. I watched a video where the photographer does exposure bracketing for a landscape scene and then merges photos in photoshop. My understanding of bracketing is that 3 shots are normally taken to expose shadows, midtones and highlights and then merged together.

He uses a trick to block the sun when exposing for the foreground by putting a finger in front of the lens. Back in his studio, he ends up with just two photos, one with the finger and one without. He then blends them and removes the finger.

What I'm not understanding is how he did the bracketing for this, how many shots he might have fired. He doesn't really explain that bit apart from that he brackets 2 stops either side.

Would he have bracketed 3 shots with the finger then merged them to end up with one shot with the finger. Then bracketed 3 shots without the finger then merged them to end up with one shot without the finger. Then merged and processed those two final shots and removed the finger? Or have I overcomplicated it? I'm sure I have!

Here's the video. If you're happy to watch a little of it, the important part is really just a couple of minutes from 3:11 to 5:14. I've set it so it should play right from that bit.

 
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He's taken 2 photos, one with the finger one without. Seems completely pointless to me, all he has done is remove the flare by using the finger and created a whole load or work. He could have got a perfectly decent dynamic range with the one photo imo, just needed a bit of work in Lightroom to balance the foreground and background.
 
TCR4x4 said:
He's taken 2 photos, one with the finger one without. Seems completely pointless to me, all he has done is remove the flare by using the finger and created a whole load or work. He could have got a perfectly decent dynamic range with the one photo imo, just needed a bit of work in Lightroom to balance the foreground and background.
Click to expand...

Yes it sound like a fair bit of work. With just one shot, could the sky and sun flare be balanced by using the graduated filter?

j crossley said:
Based on the file numbers he took at least SIX shots.
Click to expand...

Ah, well spotted. Yes, file numbers R6A3860 to R6A3865. Perhaps I am on the right track then. So maybe he did take 3 shots with the finger and boiled it down to 1 and another 3 without and boiled that down to 1?
 
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He's taken several bracketed shots to make sure he captured the full dynamic range and one with his finger to remove the flare, looks like he then decided he didn't need all the brackets, which is often the case, and he just picked the best 2 to blend to get both the best exposure and remove the flare.... taken bracketed exposures is like a safety net, you'll definitely capture the full range but might well find you don't need them all to produce the final image. The problem with using a single image and pushing highlights/shadows in editing is that it can produce ugly halos so blending 2 images at different exposures helps prevent this in very contrasty scenes

Simon
 
Yes the technique is a good one for bracketing, but the obvious simple alternative is a Hard Grad Filter, especially with the bridge one where there is an obvious line for the grad
 
jamesev said:
Yes the technique is a good one for bracketing, but the obvious simple alternative is a Hard Grad Filter, especially with the bridge one where there is an obvious line for the grad
Click to expand...

Except grad filter will cause considerably more flare in this scenario, the transition will not be perfect and finally the brightest part around the sun will still clip. What an expensive way to waste money.
 
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