One morning in November, I looked out the window to see what promised to be a gorgeous sunrise. Fortunately, my Nikkor 14-24mm lens was already on my camera, a Nikon D700, so all I had to do was grab the tripod and run out the door. I set up just behind the house and saw the bright clouds reflected in the windows of the house, giving a warm golden glow to the stone work.

One of the primary requirements for good HDR (High Dynamic Range) images is a tripod. Even if the normal exposure could be hand held, you still need to be sure that every image in the bracketed series will line up perfectly. Photomatix Pro, the software I use to process HDR images, can do a decent job of lining up images, but the result is often less than desirable if a tripod was not used – resulting in what appear to be out of focus images.

Other important considerations are:

* aperture priority (to have a consistent depth of field),
* auto-ISO off (set the lowest ISO possible to reduce noise in the images),
* and manual focus (to make sure the focal point doesn’t change from one image to the next).
* Some also recommend setting the white balance to something other than Auto. I always shoot in RAW, and this has not been an issue. If it were, the white balance of RAW images can always be changed with software.

So, I shot 7 bracketed images with 1EV spacing between each one, at an aperture of f/5.6 and the lens at 14mm.

After importing the images into Adobe Lightroom, I immediately exported them to Photomatix Pro. Photomatix default settings usually provide a very good starting point but optimum results will normally require tweaking some of the settings. In this case, I left the strength at 100%, but reduced the Luminosity slightly because the default setting was too bright.

Next, I increased the Smoothing setting slightly to get rid of the halo around the house – this is sometimes introduced by HDR processing and can add impact to some images but often results in an unnatural looking effect.

Finally, I reduced the Micro-smoothing to zero to retain texture in the clouds and stone work on the house and then saved the image back in to Lightroom for some minor tweaks.

The highlights were still a little too bright so I used Lightroom’s Highlight Recovery slider to reduce those slightly. I almost always add some Contrast and Clarity – it seems to add a bit of a sharpening effect. Then I normally increase the Vibrance, especially if there is some blue sky, to deepen and darken that sky. Finally, I’ll sharpen slightly and and do some noise reduction to make sure the image is as smooth and noise free as possible.

Producing HDR images is a lot of fun and can give some added dimension to your portfolio – so give it a try!

View Thru Mike’s Viewfinder Flickr Photostream

Waiting to pick up Chinese food tonight so I ran across the street to this place and shot a photo. I was in this shop a couple of months ago and all I can think about is that movie Grumpy Old Men. The guys that work here are actually really nice but it just reminds me of the 50’s or something. Anyway, back to the weekend!

Where
Bennington, VT

The Shot
Nikon D90, Sigma 10-20mm, bracket 3 exp (-2,0,+2) using a tripod

Photomatix
Generated HDR using Photomatix, tonemapped with Details Enhancer

Photoshop CS3
Layer mask of curves to slightly increase the contrast
Layer mask of decrease saturation (reds) to reduce the tone of the sign
Layer mask of levels to correct the overall shot
Blended some areas to correct the red color cast
Dup layer to apply high pass filter @ 60% to sharpen things up a bit

Noise Reduction
Neat Image Trial Version

You
I would always appreciate any suggestions you may have. I don’t always know the best way to adjust things in Photoshop so any areas of improvement are welcomed.

View Eric Wood’s Flickr Photostream

Camera: Nikon D90
Exposure: 30
Aperture: f/25.0
Focal Length: 62 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash

How I Did It

I used an old double pole cloth hanger (google it) in a dark room to hold a little LED construction I made. The LED construction consists of 5 small LEDs of different colors and a detachable battery pack with an on/off switch.

The lamp is hanging from the cloth hanger. On the ground I put a 1×1m mirror. In an angle of about 60 degrees I put my camera on a tripod, facing the mirror and focusing on the little LEDs reflection.

I switched off the light in the room, set my shutter speed to 30 seconds and put the LEDs in a circular motion. As soon as they were spinning evenly, I switched on the LEDs via the battery pack switch, let them rotate for a short while and switched the lights off again. 30 seconds are a long time, you will probably need about 10 seconds where the LEDs are actually turned on. You have to pay attention that you switch off the LEDs in about the same position where you switched them on so that there is almost no telling where there is the beginning or end in your picture.

It was really fun taking those pictures and it is an easy setup with the “wow-effect” many of us are looking for

View derRuedi’s Flicker Photostream

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.

View er-lau’s Flickr Photostream

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.

View Photonelly’s Flickr Photostream

By Andy Beal

Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 10
Aperture: f/11.0
Focal Length: 42 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: -1/3 EV
Flash: No Flash

I happened to be in Waikiki when they launched a few fireworks. I knew this ahead of time, so set up my camera on a tripod, on one of the small piers.

I wasn’t sure where the fireworks would launch, so I set a relatively wide angle on my zoom lens. Then, knowing that I’d need a long shutter time, I set my ISO to 100 (the lowest) and my Aperture to f/11. This seemed to work well.

I was in Manual mode, so experimented with changing the exposure time. If I had used Aperture priority, the camera would have selected it’s own shutter speed. If I had selected Shutter priority, the camera would have selected its own aperture.

I didn’t have my remote control with me, so I used the camera’s timer so that it took the shot 3 seconds after I hit the shutter release. This is important, because you want to avoid any shake in the camera, while it’s taking the photo.

One thing I learned with this shot, was that the best option was to manual focus to infinity. Using the auto focus didn’t work, because the camera would simply “hunt” for something to focus on–and it was too dark.

Then, I just kept hitting the shutter button and hoped that I’d get a shot like this.

There was very little I did to the photo in Aperture. Pretty much cropped it and that was it!

View Andy Beal’s Flickr Photostream.