Category: Photography

More HDR Photos

Another experiment. Handheld exposures at +2  0 -2 using an inexpensive 0.45x wide angle attachment. Here is the 0 EV RAW image, the best I could do importing into PS…

photoshop raw

The camera did a good job with the exposure to get shadow details, but the sky is blown. Here is the tone compression image, which approximates what I get with Lightroom, but better for having the dynamic range of three exposures…

tone compression

And finally the detail enhancer, plus some post-processing in PS to increase the global contrast and color saturation…

detail enhancer

This last image begins to approximate the “HDR Look” I think. Pushed it just to the edge of natural in this case. Notice the obvious detail on the porch, which was in deep shadow!

My First HDR Photos

I’m learning about High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography using a Canon G10 and Photomatix Pro. The photo above is my first attempt using the Detail Enhancer tool with five bracketed exposures +4 +2  0 -2 -4. Here is the same image again, this time with the Tone Compressor tool…

Here is a comparison photo created from a single RAW file with minimal adjustment…

One thing I discovered is that the Tone Compressor in Photomatix, Adobe Lightroom, and the RAW plug-in for Photoshop all do approximately the same thing—global tone mapping to recover “blown” pixels in bright areas and bring out detail in dark shadows.

The key toning controls from Lightroom 1.4.1 are shown on the right. Recovery pulls the highlights in from the right on the histogram. Fill Light does the opposite from the left. It also has the nifty Clarity and Vibrance sliders near the bottom. The former is a type of local contrast enhancer and the latter increases the saturation of mid tones. I routinely give my photos a dash of each! The RAW plug-in has almost identical controls for importing/converting. Turns out I’ve be doing lightweight HDR for the past two years thanks to LR. Now it’s time to take things to the next level!

Finally, I just finished reading Ferrell McCollough’s Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography, which is a good place to start if you are ready for an in depth discussion of techniques and software.

Everglades Canoe Trip 2009

Yet another excellent adventure, this year with my youngest brother Bruce. We started at Coot Bay Pond and circled clockwise around Whitewater Bay. The first day was spent mostly paddling up the Joe River, where we saw manatee and dolphins galore. The Joe River Chickee faces west and we had an excellent sunset. The next day we did a “boomerang” with the tides out to the Gulf and up the Shark River. The hurricane damage to the coastal mangroves was remarkable. We even saw a Loggerhead Sea Turtle swimming toward the shore!

After exploring the small streams north of the river we camped on the Shark River Chickee. The next day we waited for the tide to return and float our boat off the mud. We got some reading in, ate lunch and took off about noon. Bruce led us through “The Labyrinth” — a complex of creeks and ponds leading back to the big bay. We stopped to rest at the Watson River Chickee and kept out of the wind as much as possible on our way up the North River.

It was cool with a steady breeze to keep the bugs off so we slept out under the stars that night. Outstanding! Had a small problem with my pad, which developed a “tumor” overnight. The sun rose in an almost cloudless sky. We continued north towards the cut-off between the North and Roberts Rivers.

Along the way we saw bromeliads in bloom and a pair of Ospreys sharing a fish in a classic nest. From there we turned east into the Lane River and did a bit of bushwhacking. Then we proceeded south to Hell’s Bay and our chickee. That night we had both Venus and the crescent Moon overhead.

The next day dawned warmer and more humid. Two dolphins escorted us for twenty minutes as we made our way down the East River and out to the bay. Then it was headwind time until we crossed Coot Bay and got back into the mangroves. We finished where we started, the Coot Bay Pond put-in. An nice finish to a spectacular trip!