Wednesday, I made this photo of Strasburg Rail Road 2-6-0 No. 89 at the East Strasburg, Pa., station.
I imported the Nikon NEF RAW file into Adobe Lightroom, where I implemented a variety of adjustments aimed at producing a better balanced photo with greater highlight and shadow detail, superior color rendition, and more even overall contrast.
I manually implemented corrections similar to the results created by composite algortihms employed by many contemporary smart phones used as cameras.
So that you can see how I implemented some of the changes, I’ve included screenshots of my Adobe work screen.
This is a JPG made from the NEF RAW file without adjustment. Note the lack of detail in shadow and highlight areas and high contrast.First round of adjustments in Lightroom. Note the postion of the Highlight and Shadow sliders. Also watch the histogram at the top of the page to see how it changes from window to window.Second round of adjustments: in this window I’ve manually lowered overall contrast, placed the black in the shadow and whites in the highlights, while increasing saturation and warming the color temperature. Notice how the histogram shows how I’ve moved the pixel distribution toward the center of the graph, which reflects the lower overall constrast.In this window, I’ve chosen the ‘select sky’ control. All the corrections here were made to the sky to improve the detail in the clouds and the overall contrast of the sky relative to the scene. The intent was to replicate how the sky appeared and not to make an unworldly dramatic sky out of ordinary thermal clouds.Final adjustment: I used the ‘clarity’ slider to globally improve the contrast by giving the image a little ‘snap’ that doesn’t significantly change the shadow or highlight detail. It might seem counter intuitive to lower the overall contrast and the increase it with the ‘clarity’ control, but this can really work to make for a more natural scene out of a high contrast RAW file.This was my end result. It’s not perfect, but its looks a lot more realistic and pleasant than the unadjusted high-contrast NEF file.
Amtrak Keystone 656 departed Lancaster, PA on time.
We drove to intercept it along the Main Line at Gap.
This time of year evening trains at Gap are coming directly out of the sun. This can be a challenge or a feature, depending on how you make your photographs.
I like to work with contrasty evening light. In my black & white film days, I’d adjust the contrast in the processing and use a relatively weak (dilute) solution of a highly active developer at comparatively high temperature with minimal agitation.
With my Nikon Z cameras I can achieve similar results in color with post-processing adjustments of the RAW files in Lightroom.
Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens. Exposure; f6.3 at 1/2000th second, ISO 200.Adobe Lightroom work window showing the position of slider corrective controls. (Ignore the prefix ‘auto’ before each slider control).Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens.Nikon Z6 with 24-70mm lens.
Yesterday evening (September 22, 2022), I made a few photos of Dublin’s LUAS trams using my Nikon Z6.
It had been raining much of the day but about 6pm the sun came out, making for some interesting but high contrast scenes.
Back in the old days I’d have worked with black & white film to make the most of this type of lighting, and controlled the contrast chemically. Now, I’m applying contrast controls digitally to my Nikon’s NEF (RAW) files using Adobe Lightroom.
Do these photos work?
If they don’t, I’ll take more later.
LUAS tram on Parnell Street in Dublin. JPG from the unaltered NEF file (No changes to color, contrast, exposure etc).LUAS tram on Parnell Street in Dublin. This is my adjusted version of the same NEF file. I’ve paid special attention to the sky using Adobe Lightroom’s built in ‘select sky’ mask.Abbey Street in Dublin. JPG from the unaltered NEF file (No changes to color, contrast, exposure etc).Abbey Street in Dublin. JPG from the adjusted NEF file.
