Archive of ‘Technology’ category

Tools for Bracketing Exposures – Part 2 – Tech Thursday

HDR photos of National Cathedral, Washington, DC - ©TimeLine Media

In the menus for Nikon cameras that have a bracketing feature. With this feature you can specify the order that the bracketed exposures are created. In this menu, it shows that the exposures start from underexposed frames first. Then the metered exposure (MTR), and finally the overexposed frames.

Bracketing Setup

Nikon bracketing setup
Nikon bracket setup

After that is all setup, go back and put your camera in Aperture priority. In this semi-automated mode, you can ensure that the aperture will not change as you make the bracketed exposures. The camera will then change the exposures from under to over. It does this changing the shutter speed after each time the shutter is fired. You can tell that your camera is set to make bracketed exposures by the tick marks along the exposure scale. This is an important indicator as you may setup your camera to make bracketed exposures, then forget, then wonder why your camera seems to have gone crazy with all these strange settings.

Nikon LCD screen setup for bracketing - ©TimeLine Media
Nikon LCD screen setup for bracketing – ©TimeLine Media

Camera Setup

Once you have the camera setup for bracketing exposures, change the motor drive mode for the camera to the highest frame rate that is can shoot. On some cameras like this D4, you will be able to shoot a bracket of photos very quickly! In this case, if you have the bracket setup as above going from the underexposed to the overexposed frames, you will be able to hear the shutter slow as you go through the series. It is an especially nice audible check to know that the bracket was setup directly. Having a shutter release remote like the MC-30 for Nikon DSLRs will take your hands off of the camera body making the exposure even sharper by avoiding the camera shake from pressing the shutter button.

Nikon MC-30 remote shutter release
Nikon MC-30 remote shutter release
Nikon remote connection to DSLR
Nikon remote connection to DSLR

Just click and hold the big button on top until you hear the camera make all of the exposure that you had setup. In this case, it was setup to make 9 exposures, so I just held it down until it was done. Very easy! Now you will have all the exposures you need, that are easily brought into your favorite HDR program for processing.

HDR photos of National Cathedral, Washington, DC - ©TimeLine Media
HDR photos of National Cathedral, Washington, DC – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Tools for Bracketing Exposures – Tech Thursday

Air Force Memorial morning HDR - ©TimeLine Media

When creating high dynamic range or HDR photos, you need to make multiple exposures of the same scene. However, the images need to be made at difference exposure values. Between each time you fire the shutter, you only change the shutter speed. Afterwards you have a set of photos that have the same composition, but differ in the amount of exposure. In this case half will be under exposed, half will be over exposed. One will have the exposure set by the meter.

Bracketing Exposures

Air Force Memorial multiple exposures - ©TimeLine Media
Air Force Memorial multiple exposures – ©TimeLine Media

These three images were exposed (from left to right) for 1/3200th second, 1/400th second, 1/100th second, at an aperture of f/5.6 for all. For the final image, I had a total of 9 exposures that were combined to make the HDR file. To ensure you have good images to work with, it helps to make these exposures as fast as you can. If your position moves, or elementes in the frame move between each exposure, it will be more post work. In software you need to correct these, It adds to the long post processing of these files. Many modern DSLRs have functions and tools that will help.

Bracketing and motor drive settings on Nikon DSLR - ©TimeLine Media
Bracketing and motor drive settings on Nikon DSLR – ©TimeLine Media

In my Nikon camera, I can use the “Bracketing” function to set the camera to take a series of exposures that vary in shutter speed. Holding this BKT button, and moving the main command dial will bring up this dialog box in the mail LCD screen:

Nikon LCD screen setup for bracketing - ©TimeLine Media
Nikon LCD screen setup for bracketing – ©TimeLine Media

What this screen is showing it that the camera will take 9 frames with 1.0 stops of light between each exposure. You can change this to be 7, 5, or 3 frames, and you can change the differences of stops between each to be 0.3, 0.7, 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 (!) stops of light difference between each. From my experience, having 9 frames with a stop between each frame will cover more than an adequate amount for most situations. You may have to change depending on your particular subject, but this has worked for me very well in both indoor and outdoor photos.

Air Force Memorial morning HDR - ©TimeLine Media
Air Force Memorial morning HDR – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Mediawww.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Photography Websites

Tidal Basin at sunrise - ©TimeLine Media

It has never been easier to share your photos online. I can remember in the first years of the web how magical it was to download photos. Using a web browser was so easy. Comparatively you had to download individual files from a gopher or FTP site. Then open the photos in a separate JPG or GIF viewing program. With the browser, you had an experience that was much easier to view a collection of photos in an album-like setting.

Websites Sharing

Lincoln Memorial at sunrise - ©TimeLine Media
Lincoln Memorial at sunrise – ©TimeLine Media

Now, social media networks heavily encourage the sharing of images online. With the price that Facebook paid to acquire Instagram, it is not surprising to see where they see the most participation in their users. With all the social networks, though, there is a tradeoff for photographers. Because all of these networks are free to sign up, participate, and share, the companies need to make revenue somewhere. YOU and your photos are now the currency that these networks use to grow their business. In some small parts, they are taking your photos and using them to get more people to share and participate, and they hope, get them to patronize their advertisers.

BW Vector Social Media Icons

To take more control over this natural give and take, I believe all photographers should have their own web space that they are paying for, and maintaining themselves. It has never been easier to reserve your own domain name, and sign up with a web host with all the gigabytes of storage you need for a minimal cost. If you are bothered by these social networks “stealing” your images to use, this is the best way to display your photos online. I post a little on these as a way to drive traffic to my personal website!

Tidal Basin at sunrise - ©TimeLine Media
Tidal Basin at sunrise – ©TimeLine Media

Speaking of which, my portfolio website is currently undergoing and exciting revision! I am switching over to a new service for showing off my best images. I will post more when the transition is finished, and I would love to hear what my blog readers think of the changes!

TimeLine Media portfolio site
TimeLine Media portfolio site

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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