This picture is another auto-HDR that would be hard to get out of a single exposure. You could probably get good results if you shot in raw and post-processed, but less time in post is a good thing to me. The auto-HDR really helped to bring out the bookends well keeping it natural looking.
Today is Monday and the start of a new theme. This week’s theme is all about another one of my camera’s built-in features – Auto-HDR. I tried it out once when I first got the camera, and didn’t like the results and I’ve never really gone back to it, but I’m trying to learn the strengths and weaknesses of this camera and how to best use it in a variety of situations. For those that don’t know, HDR stands for high dynamic range and is the contrast between bright and dark portions of an image. The human eye is capable of seeing a wide range of brightness, but camera sensors have a very limited view. In today’s photo for example, you’ll end up with the lamp as a bright blob with no details in it. The areas to the edge of the picture would be almost dark. You could expose for the shadows, but that would make the light even brighter. Using HDR you can take the same picture at different exposure levels. Usually this involves one properly exposed picture, one exposed for the highlights, and one exposed for the shadows. Then software is used to merge these images together so that bright spots aren’t completely blown out and shadows aren’t just black. I’ve done this a couple times on my own using Photoshop, but tend to forget the in camera option. This picture was taken in camera and the camera did a great job of keeping the highlight details and brightening up the shadows. The camera saves the middle exposure along with the HDR, and in this case the middle exposure has turned the right display case entirely black and in the HDR you can actually see the busts that are in there. You could play with the levels some and bring the detail out even more, but I didn’t.
It is early evening on May 30th and I’m just recovering from Phoenix Comic-Con. I chose to use this picture of Lando Legend I took during his panel. The question line was directly in my line of sight, so to get a shot I had to wait until people moved a little and I like how their out of focus bodies help to frame him. I’ve gotten Billy Dee’s autograph before during my first trip to San Diego Comic-Con, but this was the first time I’ve seen him in a panel and he’s pretty entertaining.
I call this one “Those were the Droids I was looking for”
Today was my first day at this year’s Phoenix Comic-Con. There is a big Ghostbusters booth and they have this awesome giant Stay-Puft inflatable. He really does look like he’s coming to eat you.
The sad fate of Rock Band instruments.
On this day 34 years ago the first Star Wars film was released. I figured I’d take a picture of something Star Wars for today’s selection. I chose this shot of my Sideshow 12″ Utapau Clone Trooper and kept the depth of field shallow enough to focus on the trooper and keep his gun distorted.
This is kind of what I wanted to do with my fan photo from a couple weeks ago, I just didn’t have a light then to do it with. The chain came off my bike earlier so I had it upside down to put it back on and the idea of putting the bike lights on the wheels and spinning it seemed like it could work well. I liked how it turned out with one wheel at the edge and one in the center.
I’ve wanted to get a picture while riding my bike since I got it that displayed some form of motion blur. There have been specific themes the last two weeks that prevented that so since this is the start of a new theme, I went ahead and did it. It was actually quite challenging and I may need to get a camera mount to make it work properly. The problem was the shutter speed had to be slow to create the blur, but not so slow that trying to press the shutter while riding would cause excess camera shake. You need an object in the picture that’s steady to make the blur look right and this was the only shot I was able to achieve that with without excess shake.
We’ve got this broken office chair that was sitting outside and I liked the look of it in the dark. The anti-motion blur allowed me to get a photo in a very dark condition handheld, which is pretty amazing.
Utini! 