(Image revised and updated 8/1/12)

When I shot this I intended this frame, correctly exposed for the sky (well almost) but with the rest of it barely visible, to be used with several other exposures to produce an HDR image. I assumed this would be necessary to capture the range of luminance, which was pretty extreme (no I didn’t calculate the range). But given some things I have read about this camera I decided to see what I could do with the single, very dark frame. This is it! Not only is it natural looking in the shadows, it is clean – no artifacts! No HL and SH tool either, just curves. Finally a digital camera that will permit exposing for the highlights and processing for the shadows!

The following image is a straight rendering of the same raw file:

50mm Zeiss Makro-Planar ZF.2, Nikon 800e, Lr 4, Ps CS6.