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Posts Tagged ‘HDR’

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Air Force Memorial – Early Morning Photos

Air Force Memorial - single exposure - ©TimeLine Media

With announcements that the cherry blossoms are very close to peak bloom, I am anxious to go out to the Tidal Basin in downtown DC to make some springtime photos! Until I get out there, I am looking back on other recent photo walks around town. The images on this post was from a particularly COLD morning at the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. I remember how numb my hands and face was after this shoot even though I was bundled up! At least one advantage is the cold keeps the crowds away, so I was mostly alone at the Memorial except for a group of school kids that quickly took some photos, then hurried back to their waiting motor coach.

Arlington, Virginia

From this high overlook, you have a panoramic view of the Pentagon, and Washington, DC below. This also brings the high winds which makes trying to keep the camera steady difficult. A tripod was definitely necessary this morning, and it allowed me to slow down and really position the camera right where it needed to be for these photos. With the tripod steadying the gear, I also took multiple varying exposure for making high dynamic range photos. Here is a comparison of a single exposure with the metered settings, and an HDR image of 7 combined images, 1 stop apart.

Air Force Memorial HDR - ©TimeLine Media
Air Force Memorial HDR – ©TimeLine Media
Air Force Memorial - single exposure - ©TimeLine Media
Air Force Memorial – single exposure – ©TimeLine Media

The edited single exposure is preferable to me. The dark part of the sky ends up in a different area in the HDR image, and I find it more pleasing in the single image. With HDR images, they bring out more of the shadow areas which did not come out as well in the HDR as a default. I could edit this more in Photoshop, but the single image was pleasing as it is, so I have decide to just keep that version instead of investing more time in the HDR file.

Air Force Memorial with sunburst - ©TimeLine Media
Air Force Memorial with sunburst – ©TimeLine Media

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703-864-8208

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Comparing HDR to Non-HDR images

Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument from Virginia - ©TimeLine Media

With all my landscape images, I have been bracketing exposures with the intent to do some post processing on the photos and create a high dynamic range (HDR) final image. One evening, I walked out on the Virginia side of the Potomac River from Washington, DC to the Memorial Bridge. This is a beautiful spot to make images of the Lincoln and Washington Monuments especially in the early evening. With the sun lowering, the white buildings again take on that pink/orange hue of the fading light.

Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument from Virginia - ©TimeLine Media
Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument from Virginia – ©TimeLine Media

HDR testing

In looking through the set of images that I made after the shoot, I did notice that this night had a smoggy haze. With rush hour traffic starting to build, it did not make for as nice a scene as the crisp winter mornings. The haze came in the middle of the frames underneath the blue, and stayed over the pink part of the sky overlaying this ugly gray layer.

This was just bad luck for the time I happened to be out there shooting. Obviously, it makes me want to try this on a different day. Perhaps I can get a better result next time. In any case, I saw the result from the post processing the bracketed photos with Photomatix. I wanted to compare it to the RAW file images. With this in mind, I had a feeling that being able to shoot at a low ISO. Additionally, with all the detail and information that the Nikon D4 gathers, I could make one of the RAW files that was in the middle of the bracket look just as good as the HDR image.

Washington, DC

Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument from Virginia - ©TimeLine Media
Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument HDR from Virginia – ©TimeLine Media
Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument from Virginia - ©TimeLine Media
Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument non-HDR from Virginia – ©TimeLine Media

What I learned in looking at these photos, is that there is not a huge difference between the dark and light sections of the photo. Moreover it is very possible to make one exposure similar to a realistic HDR image from 7 bracketed photos. The Raw file was adjusted in Adobe Lightroom with just some contrast, clarity, and vibrance added to the original file.

I then adjusted the white balance of the scene to mimic the HDR, and these photos looked very similar. Although it is not something that I am comfortable yet pre-visualizing. So it is nice to have the bracketed photos as a backup. I will probably continue to shoot both ways, and processes them in 2 ways, until I can more easily predict when it will save me a lot of time and memory card space to shoot just one photo instead of the whole series.

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Fuji X100s – Exposure bracketing

HDR - National Cathedral - ©TimeLine Media

In delving through the manual of the Fuji X100s camera, I found bracketing operations in a menu. Previously, I have posted about the drive mode for making panoramas where the camera will continuously make images while guiding you to pan the camera to create super wide panorama photos. In that same menu, you also have access to create bracketed exposures!

Menu Exploring

I did not realize that this camera at first because there was not a dedicated function button for this, and it was not present in the Quick-access menu. It was only when really looking that I found this which really makes this a useful mode. Just like other ways of working with this camera, it is also much easier to setup this mode, and implement in taking photos. There are some limitations compared with the DSLR but for the trade off in size, it is worth it for light traveling.

Fuji X100s exposure bracket setup
Fuji X100s exposure bracketing setup
Fuji X100s exposure compensation dial
Fuji X100s exposure compensation dial

If you click the Drive button, you can select the AE bracket icon, and you can select from three different options – whether to have the exposures 1.0, 2/3, or 1/3 stop apart. This is similar to the tick marks along the exposure line on the Nikon DSLR setup. I set my exposure brackets to be 1.0 stops apart. One of the limitations of the X100 compared to the Nikon in terms of bracketing, is that you are limited to only 3 exposures per shutter release. This makes it more difficult to make a larger set if you are hand-holding, which I do not recommend anytime you are trying to make these!

Bracketing Images

To make more bracket images, I make use of the exposure compensation dial. This button which is easier to use than on DSLRs, allows you to change the exposure up to -2 or +2 around the metered settings in the camera. When on a tripod, you can set the X100s to make bracketed exposures, then set the camera to -2 with the exposure compensation dial. Then make the 3 exposures around +2, and finally, turn off the bracketed exposures to just a single exposure mode. Move the dial back to 0, and take the metered exposure. This should give you a set of 7 exposures of the same scene all 1 stop apart. It is a lot more complicated to do so, but it will get the job done quickly even with this small camera! Here are some examples from a walk around the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

HDR - National Cathedral - ©TimeLine Media
HDR – National Cathedral – ©TimeLine Media
HDR - National Cathedral - ©TimeLine Media
HDR – National Cathedral – ©TimeLine Media

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

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