Happy Holidays! Mmmm, smell that cinnamon and pine.

My first attempts at an HDR shot using studio lighting. I used a 4-shot bracket (+/- 10 units – approx. 20-50) to create an HDR image.

Photographed with a Canon EOS 5D and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens. Exposure of ISO 500, f/13.0 for 1/60 with varying strengths of light output. Lit with a single soft box on 300 W/S monolight and a white semi-circular reflector.

Processed in Photomatix Pro 3.2 with post-processing in Adobe Lightroom 2.5 and Photoshop CS3.

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Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/11.0
Focal Length: 11 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV

About
I had the day off of work today so that gave me a little extra time to mess around with the camera. During the holiday season it seems like everything is a little crazier than usual so I thought something like this would be fitting.

The shot is composed of images for each item and the background shot separately with the same lighting setup. Everything was merged in photoshop with some curves adjustments and sharpening for web.

Setup:
ISO 200
1/250 s
f 11
11mm

Gear:
Canon 40D, Sigma 10-20, Manfrotto Tripod, Canon 430 EXII, Vivitar 285 HV, Gorillapod, Yangnuo Triggers, dirty laundry.

Strobist
Canon 430 exII placed in lamp (right edge of frame). Vivitar 285hv on Gorillapod stuck to top of door (left edge of frame). Each flash was at 1/2 power and aimed into the corner of the room. Triggered with Yangnuo 2.4 wireless triggers.

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By PRM Photography

Camera: Canon EOS 40D
Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 85 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

This was shot at the Neon Boneyard (Neon Museum) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Most of my shots from this interesting museum were fairly wide angle shots of the different signs but I did get some close-ups as well. I had this shot all planned out when I was looking at it and I knew that I wanted to keep the focus of the bulb further back while blurring the foreground. I did this by setting the camera to Av mode, selecting the largest aperture my lens allows, and manually selecting the focus point. I didn’t get the extreme depth of field a f/1.8 or f/1.4 prime lens would have given me but I am still happy with how it came out and it’s an example of getting what I was seeing in my mind to turn out almost exactly how I had imagined it.

Shot in RAW and edited in ACR and Photoshop CS4. I adjusted levels and boosted saturation and contrast. I also turned the clarity slider up quite a bit in ACR.

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By Photonelly (Kris Nelson)

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 1.3
Aperture: f/16.0
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

How I got this shot:

First, this was the best of multiple attempts of capturing this scene, which is one of the many benefits of shooting digital. That allowed me to try a few different settings and review the results until I got one that I was really happy with.

In order to capture the “cotton candy” feel of rushing water in this fashion, it’s all about using a slow shutter speed. So, for starters, I put my Canon Rebel XSi into Tv mode, also known as Shutter Priority mode. This mode lets you choose the shutter speed (in fractions of a second of full seconds) and the camera takes care of choosing the aperture setting based on the light in the scene you’re shooting.

Again, since I was playing around with different settings, I tested everything from 1/2 second to about 4 seconds. This particular shot was done with a shutter speed of 1.3 seconds, which in Tv mode and the widest focal length of my kit lens (18mm) put the aperture at f/16.0.

There are other techniques for controlling the light in these exposures as well. The next one I considered was the ISO speed. The lower the ISO speed, the less sensitive your sensor will be to light. I went with the lowest setting I have on my camera, which is ISO 100. The also has the benefit of reducing noise levels that higher ISO levels would have added. If you do experiment with higher ISO settings, you’ll notice that you can shoot at much faster shutter speeds than over 1 sec.

I ended up shooting this image in RAW mode, so I didn’t dwell too much on the white balance setting that I chose for this (Adobe Camera Raw lets me switch and preview all the other WB settings for my camera later on). One of the benefits I had when setting up for this shot was that we were under a decent tree canopy over the stream. That, and the overcast skies typical of the West Maui valley we were in helped offer the soft lighting I had for this shot, and made a WB selection of Cloudy (6500K) a quick and easy choice.

In these scenes, you will often have better luck in cloudy conditions or heavily shaded areas. This is just another way to help give you the proper lighting and let you drag the shutter longer than in much brighter light.

Another thing to consider with longer exposures is a tripod and either a timer or a cable release/remote control for triggering the shutter. Since this was sort of an impromptu hike, I didn’t have my tripod with me, but I was able to improvise. My tripod stand-in for this shot was one of the large rocks like the one you see in the foreground of the shot. This is where that standard camera strap for larger DSLR cameras come in handy, because even though I didn’t want to be touching the camera during the exposure, I had my hand in the loop of the strap so I could snatch up my camera should it decide to go for a fall.

For the “hands free” operation, I did have my wireless remote control for my Rebel XSi, but the problem here was that the sensor for the remote is on the front of the camera body. Never fear though, since I just switched my shutter mode to the 2-sec delay setting, which let me press the shutter and let the camera be while the shutter was open. Shooting hands free during these types of exposures reduces the amount of camera shake or movement that would otherwise reduce the sharpness of your final image.

The last tip I wanted to mention here was how my camera’s Live Mode came in handy. Although my Canon doesn’t offer a reliable auto-focus feature in Live Mode (that or I don’t trust it), it was still of use for framing my shot because I had the camera out a ways on the rock. What I did was set the Auto Focus priority point to an area that was going to be off center to the lower left (the final image was cropped, so it looks like it was focus just on the bottom). With my AF point set, I used Live Mode to line up the foreground of the shot as I balanced the camera on the rock. When I was happy enough with the composition, I turned off Live Mode and pressed the shutter. The Auto Focus and the AF priority point took it from there.

Well, I think that just about touches on all the points I was thinking of at the time. I’m sure there are other pointers, so feel free to leave a few of your own if you like. All told, I probably shot about 3 or 4 of these before I got the exposure levels where I wanted them, and then maybe 5 or 6 from different rocks and compositions. I was lucky in that the lighting conditions were about as close to ideal as they could have been, so I didn’t need to spend a ton of time on getting this shot. Maybe 15 minutes, tops.

As far as post-production goes, I already hinted that this was a RAW image and that I use Adobe Camera Raw for processing. Since I took care in getting the look I wanted in camera, there was very little I decided to tweak in post. I just mentioned this is a cropped version, so I removed a little of the top and right of the original capture. I ended up sticking with the Cloudy WB setting, but did tweak the vibrance a little for the greens at the top.

I actually used a quick 2nd pass of the RAW image through ACR to tweak the exposure of the background at the top and then used a gradient mask to blend it into the rest of the image. That and a little sharpening pretty much wrapped it up. Total editing time was no more than 5 minutes.

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By Gillian Thompson (_astralis)

Camera: Canon Digital IXUS 960 IS
Exposure: 0.3
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 7.7 mm
ISO Speed: 80
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

Another first for me: HDR!

I combined 3 images in Photomatix Pro 3.2 for this but only did some very mild tone mapping. I got to the windmill sort of late (whoops!) so each photo was taken when it was almost dark – hence the slightly grainy sky which ive managed to even out a bit with Noiseware.

Considering the boringness of the images straight out of the camera, this one has had quite a lot of post-processing, mostly in Paint Shop Pro X2. The original colour of the sky was utterly terrible but i managed to enhance the moon, change the sky colour and make the clouds stand out a bit more. I’m not too happy with the grass in the foreground but this could be to do with the fact that i had to use my little travel tripod to take the shots. It only extends to about 20cm above ground level but for now, i have to make do with what little equipment I have

My “automatic” point and shoot decided to photograph this at f2.8 so its not as detailed as it should be. I’ll definately be visiting again when i get my SLR before Christmas

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By Gary A. Stafford

Camera: Canon EOS 5D
Exposure: 1/320 second
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 125

Bright amber-colored morning sunlight, illuminating frost-covered leaves in Corbett’s Glen Nature Park, late Fall.

HDR image using a 3-shot bracket in Photomatix Pro 3.2. Photographed with Canon EOS 5D and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens from tripod. Exposure of f/4.5 for 1/320 second, +/- 1 2/3 EV, at ISO 125. Processed in Adobe Lightroom 2.5, with post-processing in Photomatix Pro 3.2 and Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Using HDR really helped me hold detail in the highlight and the quarter-tones, while not loosing the mid- and three-quarter tones. I also like bokah, which is enhanced by both the slight movement of objects in the background and by combining the three shots in Photomatix.

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By Matt Siltala

Camera: Canon EOS 20D
Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0/2 EV
Flash: Flash fired, auto mode, red-eye reduction

I wanted to test selective focusing to achieve a very shallow depth of field–also known as bokeh. Even though the largest aperture I could achieve was f/5.6, by using a zoom lens at 55mm, I was still able to get that bokeh effect.

I was actually trying to focus on the tip of the snowflake, but ended up focusing on the center. I ended up liking this shot regardless–and liked the out of focus at the front and back.

I added a little flash to make the snowflake sparkle.

The image was captured in JPEG with no post processing or enhancements.

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