Any Tori Amos fans out there? Why is this question relevant to a photography and travel site? Because, whether you are in the darkroom or on an airplane, it is nice to have your music with you. That being said, if you haven’t noticed the new Darkroom page I have added, I listed out some tunes that are in heavy rotation while I am processing images. Feel free to check out the playlist.
Nikon D300
Tokina 11-16 ATX Pro
Gitzo Traveler
Singh- Ray 3Stop RGND
Exposure: 2
Aperture: f/22.0
Focal Length: 16 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Processing Notes
Capture (1image)
Nikon NX2 (Raw conversion)
Photomatix (HDR/Tonemapping)
NIK Silver Efx Pro (BnW conversion)
Photoshop (Size for web)
LightAsMagic.com
Hey Justin-
Can you talk a bit about using hdr on an exposure like this where the subject is changing over time? Does photomatix kind of figure it out? Is it even an issue? Just starting to dabble in hdr and would like to apply it to long landscapes like this. Or is it a single exposure bracketed in post in the raw conversion and then sent to photomatix?
Thanks!
Howdy Tom,
You are correct, this is a single exposure HDR. I just opened up the RAW file with Photomatix and let it generate what it will call a pseudo hdr image. I have had pretty good results doing this. One thing you do need to look out for it noise. Single image HDRs tend to produce a bit more noise than a bracketed sequence of images. Also, a good way to reduce the noise it to convert your RAW to TIFF, durning the process you can do some of your own noise reduction prior to the tonemapping.
Hope that helps?
Take care,
Justin
iiiinteresting, little did I know you could just give photomatix a raw file and let it have at it. Thanks for the tip. Do you prefer this to creating multiple source images off one dng file in another editer (acr or what have you) and then giving those to photomatix?
Thanks again.
tt
No sweat Tom. Yep, you can just drag a RAW file into Photomatix and let it do its thing. It is pretty slick. I do prefer this, only because I might be lazy. However, I am working on an image where I didn’t get enough from my brackets, so I am having to actually extend the bracket by creating a couple extra exposures. In cases like that, I don’t mind creating the additional exposures.
how many shots do you usually put into photomatix and at what stop increments, typically?
Howdy Tom,
Depends on the image. This image was one. However, I usually have my D300 set to bracket 9 images at 1 EV. For low contrast scenes you can get away with much less, usually about 5. But scenes where I am shooting at the sun, or the sun’s reflection I will always shoot 9. At night, I shoot less because the exposure times start to really go up and then noise becomes a concern.
Hope that helps!
Helps indeed, thanks!