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DJI Spark HDR still shot, Forsythe Wildlife Refuge

sassafras

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Jun 25, 2017
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This is a location we have shot for tourism marketing before. The place is beautiful, but due to the wild natural landscaping, the building and site are obscured by 3-6 feet tall plantings that surround the property. A slight elevation cleaned up the feral surroundings, and gave glimpses of the surrounding trails and park loop road that winds through the wetlands.


I took 3 three exposures using the AEB bracketing function (this option helps overcome many of the Sparks dynamic range weaknesses). Once you select it, every shot afterwards automatically takes the 3 exposures (killer!). Exposure was set to Auto.


For post work, I used the HDR app Aurora to merge the three exposures, which is a vast improvement over photoshop, or even NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. The anti-ghosting works much better, and the results can be tamed down to a very non-HDR look if you wish. The image was then finished up with Luminar (both apps from SKYLUM, formerly Macphun). Link to full res here: Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge


This incredible National Wildlife Refuge protects more than 47,000 acres of southern New Jersey coastal habitats and wetlands. The refuge extends for 50 miles along the Jersey coast, and the visitor center is located five miles north of Atlantic City. At least 322 species of birds have been observed on the refuge, along with white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, otters and mink.
 

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Here is a better side by side of three source AEB exposures, and HDR merge and a the version from the single exposure using NIK. Forsythe: DJI Spark

The edits were done on two different computers at two different times. The Spark tends to over sharpen its images, and I did the HDR one first (which was a bit too sharp for my taste). The 2nd version was run through NIK and I used a reversed tonal contrast effect to soften the image a bit more. File sizes are around 30mb for a single image when opened (pretty impressive).
 
Thanks for sharing and mentioning Aurora as I've been looking for software to make good use of the Spark's AEB feature but it doesn't strike me that your original scene had the type of lighting that requires HDR to make it work ?
 
Actually, it was a really crappy example of why and where to use the HDR. I was surprised how close the two versions were, and did the single exposure one last. I always shoot with the AEB function on, and a lot of other pics I had done needed the other exposures to fill in lost detail. If you get a good working exposure with one of the three, it makes no sense to pursue the HDR route. I should probably attempt an edit on the single exposure using Luminar by itself.

Aurora has a fully functioning demo (Best HDR Software - HDR Photo Editor for Mac & PC | Aurora HDR 2018)

I have used a bunch of HDR software over the years, and it continues to get better. Aurora is a nice improvement over NIK's HDR Efex Pro2, especially if you prefer a more understated look but want the extended dynamic range. The anti-ghosting on Aurora works better too (where objects shift in the exposures). Both Aurora and Luminar are releasing big updates soon too. My biggest gripe is the use of layer masking and brushing in for selective adjustments – which is pretty time consuming. NIK's u-point tech lets you drop a control point anywhere on an image within any filter and control the effect from 0% to 100%, and also the size of the affected area (plus, if you want to restrain spillover, just drop an empty control point where you want the selective adjustment to stop). U-points let me bang an average image out in 3-4-5 minutes for general post work (and when you work on 1000s of pics, it adds up). I am way more proficient and quick with the NIK stuff, but was worried since it has been mothballed by Google for awhile now. NIK was just bought out by another company and will be back in development for 2018. Oddly, some of the original developers from NIK left Google to start MacPhun/SKYLUM after Google acquired NIK. So two splinter groups from NIK will be making competing software... which will be interesting to watch.
 
Thanks for the insight. I must admit I've mostly used HDR with my Sony cameras, mostly to good effet. In fact with my current Sony HX90v (takes 3 shots too I almost always shoot with HDR on outside and then view both the original and HDR version and generally keep the HDR version.

It's too bad the Spark doesn't have a simple HDR option like the HX90v. Maybe they deemed that people would complain about "ghosting" because of the movements of the Spark.
 
The Spark almost always clips the extreme highlights (white surf foam, etc), and crunches down the shadow tones. We always try to shoot our tourism stuff when light is dimmer, and not at high noon. With the Spark, it really needs a ton of light to get a good exposure. Dimly lit stuff produces a ton of noise as the ISO rises, and some really weird jpeg artifacts creep into the shadow tones. To be fair though, I have seen complaints too about how the P4 fairs in dimmer light. Ghosting is more of an issue with the drone too, because you have to deal with wind. The wind was actually around 20 mph, and I did have a few frames that jumped a bit.

I am on the hunt for a good stitching program of OSX. The standard one is Microsoft ICE, but it is PC only. I just bought Panorama Stitcher from Olga Kacher. $14.99. I need to run some tests with it. Photoshop does not do that great of a job. The second picture down here is a vertical pano (DJI Spark). You can see a hiccup in the train track and road area near the fork in the tracks, and the curve in the road. Was really impressed by the vertical pano function, the final image size was around 90mb.
 

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