Chernobyl Photos

[Loz]

Yes there's nothing wrong with the D300, I am being mean however the new Nikons are just amazing. The sensor performance is incredible, the ratings are way above my D300. I would love better low light performance too!

The 105 macro is brilliant for portraits, super sharp, clear and lovely bokeh. Bit of a long focal length but lovely lens. I do macro with it too of course!

[threadbear]

Thank you for the amazing photos of a such an interesting country and such a tragic location. When will the Ukraine be left alone to live in peace?

[Loz]

When they stop fighting with Russia? Not sure.... for the most part it's fine, where we were its nice and quiet and pleasant

[Leifmjcb]

Yeah the old cameras are still pretty competitive, I'm Using my D200 :P

[APJ]

Wow, fantastic photos, Loz, well done.  The HDR really certainly makes the detail stand out and creates a much more artistic image. However, I'd also quite like to see the non-HDR holiday-snap version!!

 

 

Fascinating location - would love to visit.  Would just need to try and forget the Chernobyl Diaries film! 

[Loz]

Haha I don't ruin my art by showing you the originals

The prison cell one is the most impressive in that the originals are TERRIBLE!! I was rushing as there were about 10 people behind me ready to leave (I'd been waiting for someone else to finish their photo) so I just threw my tripod down to take some photos. It was pitch black in there so I couldn't focus so borrowed someone else's torch. Camera took about 3 exposures and I saw on the preview that they were terrible! I even said to the guy next to me 'ah well, I'm sure I can throw them together somehow!' Without much hope!

The originals have a full on green cast over the whole image so I have used Lightroom to get a more true to life colour on them, then put them together to tone map them and edited them further. All the shots have been edited using two different programs but this one was definitely the 'best rescue'! I might consider turning one of the RAW images into a JPEG with no processing lol.

[Loz]

Ok, here you go..... just because I was amazed that I was able to rescue this shot! It was a rushed job as I was holding everyone up, it was pitch black, lit by a borrowed torch!

 

The important points to take from this are

 

1. Always shoot in RAW!!

2. Even if you screw up, there is always hope!! 

 

Please note that the 'before' shot is a RAW shot with no editing/processing whatsoever - these things should never be viewed, as you know! 

 

Before....

 

 

After

 

 

The choice of 'after' edit is a personal thing, I could go away and do it again and come up with something very different, at the time of editing I quite liked it done like that. The parts that impressed me were the temperature edits, which have made it look the right colours despite the white balance being out (it was pitch black though, I couldn't even see the colours in real life as the only light was that door right at the far end which only served to blind you and make it look even darker) and also the perfect example of why you should use High Dynamic Range editing. 

 

This is just one of the shots I combined to make the finished image. The other two are different exposure levels (but look essentially the same as the settings were the same, the shutter was just open for longer) but you can see different details within them. Here you can't see much in the corners of the shot as the torch light has only picked up the middle of it and it has exposed that bit correctly. On the other shots, the corners are much lighter and you can see everything in the corners, but overall it looks washed out as it's over exposed. By combining them, you get the correct exposure everywhere, meaning you have an overall correctly exposed shot. (this is the whole point of HDR - a camera cannot work like your eye and see both light areas and dark areas at the same time, so the only option is to combine differently exposed shots. Or use an ND grad filter if you are experiencing one of the very limited situations where one would actually be useful!) 

 

Tone mapping lets you further edit the image to get the finished result which you are most pleased with - these can very GREATLY. For example, I personally can't stand the 'painterly' look HDR edits. I always try to 'enhance reality' with my shots, rather than make them look totally off the wall crazy/unrealistic. If I'm honest, these are probably the most edited set of photos I have ever done. By 'most edited' I really mean least natural, as it's completely possible to edit the hell out of a photo and still have a perfectly natural, true to life looking shot! However these still look 'real', they just look 'movie real'. I could make them look more real, or I could make them look totally crazy. I just felt that the uniqueness of the location and the fact that it is only, derelict buildings with the intrigue being in the details of the peeling paint, that they would suit a slightly more aggressive edit. 

 

I quite enjoyed editing them though, and I plan to do some more 'real' HDR. It is a pain having to take several exposures at once, but it is definitely worth it. Faking it just isn't the same!

Edited 23 November, 2014 by Loz

[Structures]

Hope this doesn't count as a thread hijack, but here's a link to the shonky cameraphone pictures I took while I was out there last year:

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34070038@N02/collections/72157636595270225/

 

Obviously they're not a patch on Loz's shots, but as there was a request for unedited snaps I thought it was valid to throw them up.

There's also a few snaps in there from around Kiev taken a couple of months before the barricades and everything went up.

[Loz]

Cool, did you have fun? Out of interest how did your tour work? Where did you stay, how long in the zone etc? From what people have looked up on the back of this thread they seem to vary greatly!

[APJ]

Thanks for posting one of the originals there, Loz.  Now call me old-fashioned, but I happen to like the natural unprocessed look of the shot - it feels real.  Now that's not to say the final HDR is not good - far from it, it's fantastic, especially as an artistic shot - but I do also like unprocessed reality!!

 

You certainly know what you're doing with HDR.  I'd love to experiment more - but I'm still getting to grips with all the knobs and buttons on my D5200. Apparently it can auto-bracket different exposures . . . somehow!!

[Loz]

When I went back to it I actually thought it doesn't look too bad, but it annoyed me because it's got a green cast, and that wasn't the look I was going for! It's just because the White balance was wrong as it was pitch black lit with torch light. I can get the colours much better even in the original, but it's still a little bit dull and boring because at the end of the day it's just an empty corridor! It needs some sort of processing because it's just a RAW shot and the camera has done nothing with it, so it needs a bit of a tweak before being viewed!

Yes all cameras will have bracketing mode, even your old school film cameras, it's a fairly basic function. That's what I used for my HDR shots, it auto bracketed 5 different exposures - one correct, 2 under and 2 over exposed. You need to use a tripod or be very steady of hand

Edited 25 November, 2014 by Loz

[RobClubley]

https://roadtrippers.com/blog/drone-chernobyl

[Loz]

I've seen that posted a couple of times recently, weird how it keeps popping up just after I've been!

You still don't get the feeling of actually being there though!

You see the top of the hotel (the sign with writing on the top of the roof) we stood on the level you can just see below the roof as it pans out, like a balcony. One of my photos in the original post is from that vantage point

And the other building you see with a round metal sign on top, that's Fujiyama, the 16 storey high rise. We stood in top of that and my pics with reactor 4 and duga in the background are from there.

It made me laugh because one of our group climbed into the back of that sign then as he was trying to get out he tripped over it and fell over. We all looked on in horror (you just DONT fall over in the zone!!) and our guide sort of looked out of the corner of his eye, then looked away as if to say "that didn't happen..." We all laughed lots about it later.

The obvious thing to do with a flying drone camera would be go to duga with it, not that would be amazing..... might get half an idea of how big it is!!

[Structures]

The obvious thing to do with a flying drone camera would be go to duga with it, not that would be amazing..... might get half an idea of how big it is!!

 

Stop talking about seeing Duga...Every time you say it I get super jealous and mutter bad words under my breath...People at work are starting to look at me funny :-p

[Loz]

Haha! Sorry :(

[Structures]

Haha! Sorry :(

 

It's cool, the guy who organised the tour I went on last time says he can get in to Duga on all of his forthcoming tours, so I'll get there eventually :-)

[BO60BYS]

[Loz]

Yup, that's already been posted and commented about above! Lol

[Structures]

Yup, that's already been posted and commented about above! Lol

 

 I've had it posted on my facebook page about 6 times now...

[MattHunt]

The gas masks dumped in the school always makes me feel odd. Of all places why there? Very macabre.

[Loz]

The gas masks dumped in the school always makes me feel odd. Of all places why there? Very macabre.

 

 

Sorry, not been on for ages so hadn't seen your post! 

 

I don't think it's actually as macabre as people think it is, I'm sure the guys were saying that most of the masks were brought in to the town a while after the disaster. I don't think it's a sign of dead kids or anything. I don't think anyone in the town itself actually died. They didn't even leave for about 2 days (mainly because they weren't told the extend of what had actually happened!)

[MattHunt]

Hi. That's ok [emoji2]

I was more thinking that choosing the school as somewhere to dump the contaminated and knackered masks was an odd place. And since NBC is so terrible anyway the location seemed macabre.

Any more trips planned?

[Loz]

They probably did it on purpose for that reason! There's loads of them scattered around elsewhere too though. 

 

None booked yet, but I may well go again, they go fairly regularly. But I think it is 'supposedly' being knocked down at some point. Though seeing as they don't even have the money to bury the contaminated waste they already have, I can't see why they'd spend money on creating even more??

 

I've said to myself I won't go back until I've upgraded my camera! haha! Unless I went on a trip to actually look at it properly rather than focussing on photos all the time.... I don't know! 

[MattHunt]

Devil's advocate:

You've a D300 and a tripod...really need to upgrade? ?

It does seem bizarre that they would create more dust. But given current events they have worse things to worry about sadly.

[Loz]

Haha, yeah - the sensor is outdated these days! And I want to go full frame  

 

Off topic but - Is that your rabbit??