I’ve been meaning to give HDR a go for a while now but I’ve never really got my act together until now. After having a look about for the best software I decided that the offering from HDRSoft was the way forward, installed that on my machine and cast about for something to photograph. In the end I settled on the fireplace as it has some shadows that HDR would help bring out.
First off a normal exposure. Shot at f5.6 with a shutter speed of 1s it’s an OK picture, although not exactly earth-shattering composition and the shadows around the companion set and logs are a little deep. It also looks like the wall is nearly blown where the light falls on it.
Trying to correct any of the problems either by overexposing or underexposing isn’t going to work, obviously. On the left I’ve tried to correct for the dark shadows and ended up with blown highlights. On the right I’ve under exposed to get the walls in and lost the detail in the shadows completely.
Taking those three images, plus another 3 in between and putting them through the HDR plugin for Aperture with all the default settings yielded a much better image. The walls are no longer blown and you can see the detail in the shadows. For a first go I’m quite impressed. Now I just need a good set of photographs to work off.
I’ve been meaning to try my hand at firework photography for years now but for whatever reason I’ve never had my camera with me when there have been fireworks going off. This year we decided to go see the New Years Day fireworks display off the pier and I took my camera with me. To save lugging lots of kit and having to mess about with lenses in amongst a big crowd of people I just took the body with my 70-200mm lens. I figured we would probably be quite a long way from the pier so I’d need the reach and that the image stabilisation would help with hand held shots.
My first problem was focusing. The lens was going to be wide open at f2.8 so I could increase the shutter speed which meant the hyperfocal distance was over 600m which was a bit too far. Instead I set the lens to manual focus and focused on the pier while it was still lit which gave me roughly the same focus as where the fireworks were going to be, although not quite bang on.
Next up was the shutter speeds needed to get decent images of the fireworks. Through a process of trial and error I found that between 1/5 and 1/2 a second yielded the best results in terms of exposure, but hand holding shots at that speed with a 200mm lens is impossible, even with IS.
My last problem was that even at 70mm the lens was just a little too long. Ideally I’d have wanted my 24-70, or possibly gone and stood further away and relied on the hyperfocal distance for focus.
One thing I did find was that by using the motor drive and either tracking the rockets as they launched, or pointing the camera at the last set of fireworks to go off I could get a range of images from just before the firework goes off right until it was too dark to register on the sensor. It did mean a large number of images to sort through and bin, but also meant I got some reasonable results.
Even where things didn’t quite go to plan (mainly due to a combination of camera shake and the fireworks moving) I managed to get some interesting results that were quite fun. For a first go I was reasonably pleased with the results and hopefully I can take the lessons learned with me next time I do a fireworks shoot and come home with something stunning.
2010, the International Year of Biodiversity and the first time ever that my current camera body and lenses have all been clean at the same time. As the naughties drew to a close and I became an expert with Apertures retouch and spot and patch tools I decided it was high time I gave myself a late Christmas present, hand my kit over to a professional and get a full clean of the sensor and all the optics; something my camera was in dire need of.
As 2010 dawned I woke up to a beautiful day so I grabbed my shiny clean kit, jumped in the car and headed to West Runton beach, a place I’d found the year before while house hunting. The beach itself is just up the coast from Cromer (you can see the pier to the right) and is a little more ‘rugged’ than the beach near home.
Although the sky overhead was generally a fantastic shade of blue and relatively clear there were some pretty ominous clouds so getting the lighting right was a question of sitting and waiting for those clouds to pass. Not fun when you’re also trying to get pictures of waves breaking over the breakwater and the tide is going out.
One of the interesting features of the breakwater at West Runton is that it appears to be missing a section. This allows for some slightly different shots to the ones you’d normally get. The shot of the water pouring over the gap is certainly something that could yield some stunning shots next time I go back.
The same spot yielded the obligatory ‘arty’ shots, although I’ve been a little overzealous with the aperture setting and the DoF on the seaweed close up is pretty tight and the shot isn’t as sharp as it could be. Definite candidate for a reshoot with the tripod and a selection of aperture settings.
Part of the reason I didn’t hang about retaking shots is that there was a very ominous black cloud on the horizon that looked like it would deliver some serious weather. I could actually see it moving in as I stood on the beach so I decided to grab a shot of the cloud and head off. I took a number of shots from the beach, the path leading down to the beach and the seating area of the shop. In the end I settled on this shot which was taken standing on one of the tables allowing me to get a little bit of the cliff in the foreground and the blue sky leading to the angry cloud.
As I was packing up the car the sun suddenly burst through the cloud and lit the edge of the cliff in stark contrast to the storm cloud heading in from the sea. I quickly put a lens back on my camera and grabbed this shot from the car park. Ironically it was the best shot of the entire day and is now used as the site banner for the Somewhere Random sites as well as the icon you see in the browser tab.
My decision to pack up and go when I did turned out to be a good one. As I was pulling into Cromer the heavens opened and a combination of hail and snow turned everything white in a matter of seconds. Not something I’d like to have been caught in.
