master gear A
ctions, effects and tech- niques take over photo styling like fashions.
Recently, the pseudo-HDR contrast masked treatment has become all too frequently seen in professional work. Marcus Bell, Roberto Bigano, Yervant and many others can take the blame. It is not a natural look, it can do great things with skin and fabrics, and it works par- ticularly well with dull flat light and architectural backgrounds. It gives things a sort of hyper-real gloss and unlike ran- dom iPhone photo effects it can be controlled as part of a raw to JPEG workflow. Is it good? Prob- ably not. The future will cringe, even if some of the world’s best recent wedding images have been treated this way. That now changes. In the Sony Alpha 77 and other new Sony cameras – no doubt in consumer pocket models to come – you find HDR Painting
photography
In-camera contrast masked HDR Painting is about to hit the high street – hello to an amateur effect, goodbye for pros
as a JPEG style. This uses three very rapidly fired shots with a two to six stop EV bracket range and instead of combining them into a normal HDR, it applies local contrast soft masking which imitates popular actions. Unlike these, it doesn’t moderate colour saturation much and the ‘steely unreal’ look is not achieved. But that pop-out church stonework is. Since chromatic fringes are boosted too, a very good lens needs to be used.
It is very much the same look professionals have been laying on using Actions or Plug- ins, or their own Layer effects. It’s only one look so far. But this is going to hit amateur cameras in 2012, other makers will fol- low, the result is compelling to the naïve eye. Perhaps it is time to say goodbye to such effects and go for photographic pure quality again. – DK
Ì
Three images taken using HDR Painting on the Sony Alpha 77, the autumn leaves on ‘Medium’ and the stonework shots both on ‘High’ strength. The hyper-real look was already popular with photo sharing site enthusiasts; it will soon be in pocket digital cameras using new sensors that can fire ultra-fast bracket bursts. These are hand-held at 12fps speed.
MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY 14
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