British Museum Roof Fisheyed Final

This is another shot from my latest day trip to London this time from the British Museum. There must be millions of pictures of the central Atrium so I got out my trusty Samyang Fisheye lens to try for a different approach.

The Museum was established in 1753. The formerly open area at the centre was glassed over in 2000 and is the largest covered square in Europe.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix detail enhancer with natural settings

Photoshop

The +2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. To get an exact selection the pen tool was used on the sky. A brush was then used on the sky with varying opacities to partly bring back the darker sky from the HDR. The lighter +2EV image was retained for all of the building area.  

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Clarity preset was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude highlights.

Vibrance and Saturation blues used to bring up the blue areas in the sky.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and a little sharpening.

Second duplicate layer with mask to apply extra sharpening and contrast with low amount and high radius using Unsharp mask (Clarity Effect) The settings were 42 amount and 42 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

British Museum Roof Fisheyed Original

Tonemapped image

British Museum Roof Fisheyed Tonemapped

Final Image

British Museum Roof Fisheyed Final

For licences and prints see British Museum Roof Fisheyed

Edwin Jones