Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2014/02/21

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Subject: [Leica] IMG: What is reality, man?
From: photo at frozenlight.eu (Nathan Wajsman)
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 06:24:55 +0100
References: <5306F7DE.1020003@threshinc.com>

I hate to say it Peter...but I like the first image best. The blue video is 
fine, and creates a nice contrast to the performer, whose skin tones are 
very nice.

Cheers,
Nathan

Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu
http://www.greatpix.eu
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
Blog: http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/

YNWA









On Feb 21, 2014, at 7:53 AM, Peter Klein wrote:

> This is long, but you may find it interesting.  I just spent several hours 
> over a couple of days trying to get a picture "right." There were several 
> different degrees of "right" and "not right," with no clear-cut answer.  
> You might come to a different conclusion than I did.  Come into the 
> kitchen with me and let's see what was cooking. And see the following four 
> pictures after my last example for the conclusion of the series.
> 
> On Monday evening I shot a wild and crazy contemporary music festival.  
> I'm friends with several of the musicians.  The festival included several 
> pieces where the musicians performed with computer-generated imagery 
> projected on a big screen, as well as computer-generated sound.  There was 
> changing stage lighting, and spotlights on soloists that were drastically 
> brighter than the ensemble lighting. Fun stuff. :-)  I was sitting in an 
> ordinary seat in row 3, and did not have stage access.  As someone who 
> plays music myself, and has shot plays and concerts for 44 years, I pride 
> myself on knowing how to do things without being heard, disrupting or 
> distracting.  So no changing lenses during the performance, no chimping, 
> and no excess fiddling with the camera.  I set most parameters before each 
> piece, and adjusted exposure by counting detents on my Olympus E-M5's 
> exposure compensation dial.  I ended up using my Pansonic/Leica 25mm f/1.4 
> for the whole concert.
> 
> One shot posed a particular challenge.  In the piece "Up Close" by Michael 
> van der Aa, a cello soloist doesn't just play with a string chamber 
> orchestra and electronic sound.  She also interacts with a projected video 
> that runs during the piece.  This created a perfect storm of mixed color 
> temperatures.  Here's the first white balance, done for the tungsten stage 
> lights. The live woman is fine, the video is blue, blue blue.
> <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091+_2_.jpg.html>
> 
> Balance it for the video, and the live performer becomes the Lady in 
> Excess Red.
> <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091+_1_+.jpg.html>
> 
> So what to  do?  I tried black and white. Which was OK, but not quite what 
> I wanted. Not enough difference between live and Memorex.
> <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091bw+.jpg.html>
> 
> I spent a couple of hours making masks (not my best skill, and I use 
> Picture Window Pro, not Photoshop, so I don't have a magic lasso). 
> Eventually I did a combination of a polygon for the screen, merged with a 
> mask keyed to most shades of blue, plus another to reddish hues, cloned 
> one into the other, blended the two white balances through this mask, then 
> and manually adjusted the final result with the clone tool.  It ended up 
> mostly, reasonably technically correct, but the blue spill in the 
> foreground is impossible, and it's not what I perceived when I saw it.  
> During the performance, I didn't see the drastic color difference that the 
> camera "saw." But there was a difference, and this rendering almost 
> eliminates it.
> <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091-composite2ClonShpFinalCrop.jpg.html>
> 
> At which point I decided that realism was futile.  OK, let's get 
> interpretive.  I tried a partially desaturated version of the original 
> tungsten balance.
> <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/pklein/album170/P2170091Desat.jpg.html>
> 
> But the picture I eventually chose to post was the one below. I used the 
> tungsten white balance, so the live performer appeared normal, and a bit 
> of selective color correction towards grey to reduce but not eliminate the 
> blueness in the video performer only. This added some mixed-toned B&W 
> surrealness to the video image.  It was not exactly what I saw, but it 
> evoked the same sensation as what I saw. Besides, my wife preferred this 
> one.  :-)
> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/24844563 at N04/12664153803/>
> 
> Again, see the following four pics for the conclusion of the series. 
> Thanks for bearing with me.
> 
> --Peter
> 
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> 



In reply to: Message from pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein) ([Leica] IMG: What is reality, man?)