Reflections on completing the "Digital image qualities" assignment

After completing the five different exercises for this assignment I feel I have a much better understanding of the digital image qualities.

Modern digital equipment offers a great range of facilities
 and I will continue learning and experimenting in this key area of work to make the best use of these tools.  

Lessons learnt from each individual exercise are included in my blog’s posts. To save space, I am not repeating them in this section.

However, there are some useful practical points that came out of this assignment. I intend to add these points to my digital workflow, and I list these points below.

This exercise helped me to consolidate and systematise all my previous experience on dealing with the high dynamic range and different colour temperatures in a scene:

Adjustments can be made at different stages of the image capture and processing to help record a wider dynamic range of a scene.

On location

Following a simple process described below would help to achieve the best outcomes in challenging situations such as the ones described in this assignment.

1. Start by identifying your camera’s dynamic range.
2. On a location, evaluate the overall dynamic range or contrast ration of a specific scene.
3. Take spot meter readings of the brightest and the darkest areas of the scene.
4. Identify how many stops there are between the brightest and the darkest areas that need to be recorded. 
5. If the values are beyond the camera’s capabilities, decide which values are important and focus on getting the exposure right to capture them.
6. Bracket the exposure.
7. Check the histogram reading between the shots.

There are tools and techniques that help to make a better use of the available dynamic range values. For example, graduated neutral density filters can be used with digital or film cameras to record a wider range of values. The principle used in this instance is based on regulating exposure of different areas of the image. Dodging and burning tools in both darkroom and digital image processing usually aim to achieve a similar purpose.    

At image processing stage  

There are also techniques that are based on extending the dynamic range of luminance of an image. These techniques are usually referred to as HDRI or high dynamic range imaging and include:

• Computer rendering, and
• Creating an image from merging a series of photographs with various exposure values, this process sometimes referred to as ‘sandwiching’.

Tone mapping techniques are sometimes used for special effects.