Monday, January 14th Panorama
Another thing I have wanted to try for a while now is panoramas. This is one of my first tries. This is a shot of downtown Salt Lake City from high up in the avenues. Again photoshop makes this easy to do, it stitches things together nicely for you. The main things to keep in mind, is to figure out your exposure and lock that in for all the shots, different exposures can make things look off. Also overlap your images by about 25% so photoshop can stitch them together easily. Also it tends to shrink the outside images, so it is best if you take a shot with more in it than you expect to keep so you can crop it later. Also, shoot things in portrait position so you can get more of the scene from top to bottom. HHCC always welcome and wanted.
f/11 @ 1/125 ISO 200
Sunday, January 13th HDR
Okay, for my first photoshop technique I will start with something I have been wanting to try for a long time. I actually posted an example in my last post, here is my second attempt at it. I think this was a great opportunity for HDR (High Dynamic Range) because of the difficulty exposing a shot properly when near a lot of snow. Using this technique I can expose for the highlights and for the shadows and then have photoshop try to get the correct exposure at each spot in the picture. None of these shots have been adjusted other than the final merged product.
This is the darkest exposure used to bring out the details in the highlights.
f/8 @ 1/320 ISO 200
This was what my camera wanted to use for the exposure. I took shots at 1/3 stop increments down to the picture above, and up to the picture beneath.
f/8 @ 1/80 ISO 200
This is the brightest shot used to bring out the details in the shadows.
f/8 @ 1/20 ISO 200
And finally after merging all 13 shots together we get this HDR version of the scene.
This technique is a lot of fun, and I still have a lot to learn. Check out
this thread I started at 2 Peas talking about how I did it, and hopefully more experienced people will way in and discuss things I missed. I definitely think that the finished product is better than any of the individual shots that make it up. HHCC welcome and wanted.