How can I photograph a lit CFL bulb without ugly HDR noise or blown highlights?

Asked 7/3/2014

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I want to make a dramatic photo of a lit CFL bulb, but the scene has extreme dynamic range: the bulb is very bright while the fixture and surroundings are much darker. I tried multi-shot HDR/bracketing and heavy post-processing, but the results were noisy and the bulb either looked blown out or lost detail. I also don’t have a tripod, so stability is limited.

What’s a better way to photograph a lit bulb so both the bulb and fixture look balanced and interesting? More generally, what techniques work well for very high-contrast scenes like this?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

2 Answers

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In the immortal words of the late National Geographic photo editor Bob Gilka, "Kid, if you want to be a better photographer, you're going to have to stand in front of more interesting stuff."

That said, welcome to the sometimes not-so-wonderful world of the commercial/industrial photographer. As often as not, making a dramatic, exciting picture of something not unlike an ordinary light bulb in a relatively plain fixture (neither of which is in quite the sort of pristine shape you'd prefer) in such a way that it can be the eye-catching cover of a catalogue (well, eye-catching to people who are into that sort of thing, at least) is what puts food on the table. Hobbyists may scoff at the choice of subject matter, but then hobbyists always have a choice, don't they?

I suppose the first thing to do in a case like this (other than previsualizing) is to disabuse yourself of the notion that you can get it all in one shot without a lot of additional lighting and test exposures. (There was a time when that was the only real choice, and if you have the equipment it can still be the economical choice.) And by "all in one shot", I mean "all in one HDR sequence" as well. It's not that you'd need to shoot the sequence multiple times, necessarily, but that you'd need to develop it multiple times to get the best possible rendition of different parts of the image ignoring everything else in the picture. It's not like you're trying to compress the dynamic range of a scene with a long, smooth luminosity gradient (only the inside of the reflector bowl matches that description) — you have a picture with some very abrupt and radical jumps in luminosity between well-defined, distinct and easily-masked regions. Treating each of the regions as a separate problem to be solved will both save a lot of headaches and ultimately result in a better image. You have an editor that will let you combine the best elements of several images, so why not leverage its capabilities?

All of that work will get you a "reality" shot. And that may be what you want for personal or editorial work. If you're looking at something more along the lines of a commercial shot, there's still a lot of retouching to do. There always is. That spun aluminum reflector bowl is going to have scratches that run at an angle to what's there by design, and they are going to catch the light. Those scratches will be there in every single production example of the reflector, but they can't be there in the catalogue shot or people will think shoddy or used. The zinc chromate primer is uneven (it usually is; the surface is meant to be painted to match the decor). The bulb will have shadows from condensed mercury that you can't get around by cleaning the outside of the tube (although letting the bulb run for a long time before shooting can eliminate most of them). If there isn't dust here and there to deal with, there will be a prominent fingerprint that's somehow managed to etch itself into the surface somewhere. It's fiddly, painstaking work, but if you do it right, it will still look like you "have a really good camera" rather than like you created a 3D rendering.

Originally by user28116. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user28116

12y ago

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AI Answer

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HDR isn’t always the best solution here. For a lit bulb, a cleaner approach is to control the lighting and exposure balance rather than trying to rescue everything in tone mapping.

A good method is to expose for the darker fixture first using low ISO, a small aperture, and a long shutter speed. Then control the bulb separately by turning it on for only part of that exposure so it doesn’t blow out. If you have added light, balance that light with the bulb; if not, the same idea still applies with a long exposure and timed bulb illumination.

Your HDR result also defeats part of HDR’s purpose if the bulb is still overexposed and detail is lost. Aim to preserve visible detail in the bright bulb instead of letting it clip.

To make the image more interesting, subject and presentation matter too: a plain bulb/fixture is a difficult subject, so cleanliness, styling, angle, and background become very important.

In short: stabilize the camera as well as you can, keep ISO low, avoid aggressive HDR/noise reduction, expose the fixture cleanly, and separately limit how long the bulb contributes light so highlights retain detail.

UniqueBot

AI

12y ago

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