hey everybody let's have a little conversation about RAW files JPEGs and
HDR shall we? So what's a raw file? A raw file is your un-fiddled with data
it is what the camera captured and it has not been fiddled with in any way. The
JPEG is either made for you by your camera, so when you think you're doing it
right in camera and you just want it straight out the camera as a JPEG
actually your camera's doing the post-production for you and I'm going to
show you a little something with that in a moment... and then the HDR are for those
times when your eyes and the camera see things differently because cameras and
eyes do see things completely differently, particularly in high
contrast situations and I can prove that. If you get someone to stand in front of
a window for example, you look at them and you can see both their face the
detail in them and what's going on at the garden - but if you try to take a
photo of them what are you likely to get? It's going to be something like this
isn't it? They're gonna go into a bit of a silhouette and what we could see was
something like this which is an HDR image I have made from this shot. Now
let's just move back a bit, so you've got your silhouette - that's what the cameras
done, you think okay well let's just brighten up the exposure a bit. So as you
do, okay we're getting closer to seeing our friend but the backgrounds getting
brighter and brighter until you've reached the point where you can see the
person - but the background just looks a mess. So what was that thing I just said
about the JPEG is the image that your camera has developed from the raw file
for you? Let me show you... So if I take the middle exposure this
one here which has got the most data at either end, I'm just going to
make a copy (I'll make a virtual copy here in Lightroom), I can then apply the
develop settings that my camera would have put onto it and you can see the
JPEG the camera would have made. So let's just whizz down the bottom here to the
camera calibration. This is on Adobe standard that means it's an Adobe zone
basic thing it means it hasn't been fiddled with in any way. You can see here
Pro via standard that is a develop setting within my camera. Your camera
will have them too, they may not be the same as mine because it depends on the make.
These are controls from within the camera
that you can apply to your raw file. these are how your camera makes
your JPEGs. So let's click on that one, right, did you see it change? If we just
look between the two there's the untouched raw file and this is what the
camera would have done to it and it doesn't look great does it? It's not what
we want; it's nowhere near what our eyes were seeing which was much closer to that.
So how are we going to work with this, what are we going to do?
What we're gonna do next is I'm actually going to take you back in time to when I
shot this picture - because we filmed it - and I want to show you the whole
setup and how they were shot and bracketing the exposures so that we've
got the good stuff. Then what we're going to do is come back here
in part two and we're gonna put them together, photo merge them as
HDR's, I'm just gonna show you what some of the things mean within Lightroom but
first off let's go back in time, let's go take the photo.
Come on Rosie Wise let's go and play in the summer house! So we've got a door, we've
got a window and we got my lovely friend Rosie Wise who's volunteered to come
and have her picture taken and I think as you can already see, you can see the
garden you can see Rosie's a bit of a silhouette but I'm standing here and
you've just going to take my word for it - I can see Rosie's face. Yes, it's shadowy,
yes, it's dark, but I can see both - it's not an either/or situation. Let me see if
I can take a picture and just sort of show you what happens in the camera so
yeah just stay there for a moment Rosie... I am still here, I'm sort of
out of shot as this a very small and echoey summer house. Let me see if I
can just take a picture but I'm going to try and roll a bit of Fuji video to show you.
So here we go, this is what my little Fuji is seeing
through the camera on normal exposure and as you can see this kind of area out
here, this is kind of, you know, showing all right. We've got a little bit of light on
this side of Rosie's face but that's about it,
otherwise she's a silhouette. In order to see more of Rosie (and I'm hoping this
works) I have to increase the exposure. You can see it's just sneaking up little by little
and you can see a bit of her face now, we can see a little more -
but look what's happening to the background, it's just absolutely blowing
out isn't it? So now we can see some of Rosie's face but the background is
completely gone. So, how do we deal with that? Well, if I can stop the video...
(regular viewers are used to me swearing because I can't turn the video on and
off on the Fuji) So how do we deal with that? Well
obviously there is the whole HDR thing, I've never found it hugely successful
and I've found the best method is to put a flash, use light
add light here, add a reflector, not a flash straight into somebody's face, this would
look horrible and I'm not demonstrating this - we're talking about how
your eye sees light differently to a camera - but we could have a little go at an HDR
couldn't we? You know by taking multiple exposures you bracket them in camera, you
then bung them into Lightroom or whatever you use and then you map them together.
Lightroom is brilliant for this. Anyway let's have a little look. So Rosie, I'm
going to try two things we're gonna have one shot here with Rosie just leaning
against the door where it really is quite dark. This is a test okay, it really
is very dark. Could you just go back a little and outside maybe that way a tiny
bit thank you. I don't know if you guys can see in the video camera but the
light on Rosie's face is a lot brighter, she's only gone back a little bit but it
really is a lot brighter. So we're gonna do one here an HDR and one there and
have a little look and see what happens. So Rosie would you mind coming back in
and let's see what happens. So how am I gonna do this?
Well I'm gonna do it by setting the camera onto a manual exposure and I need
to find the one where I think it's the best balance, probably between the two, so
I've got some burnt highlights and some are rosy because what's the
important part of this picture here? Is the picture of what's going on out there
in the garden or is it of your lovely mate?
Right, so I've got her in focus, I've found a manual exposure which is
somewhere halfway between the two, so I've got - um what have I got? - I can't even see
it because it's too dark so I'll put it on the screen.
So I've got a shot here
and put my camera on bracket I've set it to bracket one under and one over
so let's just take a shot... there we go, we had three frames there. Let me bring those up
and have a quick little look at the histograms - they're very spiky at either end.
Let's have a look at the next one, that's better we got more of Rosie's face - it's
still quite dark and moody and it's not the most flattering lighting either.
But we've got three shots, we've got good histogram stuff going on. Let's try one more
Rosie would you mind going just outside?
You've got it, let me have a little look... You see now the
light in camera is already much nicer. Let me just see if I can video this for you
again guys - bare with me, I know I'm off camera a lot here - probably a
blessing because you'd rather look at Rosie than me... I don't know why you're laughing...
Let's have a look, I've just lowered my ISO a bit but here we go - so let me just
take a shot going with what the camera wants to do, which is gonna be.. bare with
me, I'm having to use my torch it's so dark in here - I can't even see the top of
my camera. I've got my little iPhone torch going on here. Right! Now the camera
is making this completely wrong and I do not know why? It's because I'm still set
on three stops over. Look, let me roll the video to show you the mistake I just
made. Look so we're on three stops over and actually now Rosie is in slightly nicer
light, it's kinder on her face, we're seeing more detail in the background but
if I bring this back to where the camera wants to take it we should be
getting a bit darker, and a bit darker, and we're starting to get more of the
background come into the shot but look - you see now we're seeing the detail
outside Rosie Wise has become a silhouette.
Right, let's shoot our HDR from there, ritual swearing trying to turn off the
video camera, here we go, I'm going to set the manual exposure again where I
think is about right - somewhere between the two and I think it's somewhere
around there. I am getting a 125th of a second at F 5.6 and I'm using 600
hundred ISO - can you see me? 600 ISO. So, set it onto bracket, hold it
really still Rosie Wise, here we go, don't flinch - that's looking pretty good actually.
In part two I'm going to go back and I'm
going to see if I can do an HDR, I'm gonna to have a look at the differences in
the computer in Lightroom. If you found this useful that's great please click in
a few likes, this is part of my Seven Steps to Perfect Pictures so
the next part is going to be a little insight into that course. If you'd like
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the video around because it'll help me make more, take care.