Suzy & Mom

This photograph was taken hand held with the ISO set at 2000. Lesson learned: Check your camera settings.

It was shot with the Nikon D90 that has since been replaced with the Nikon D7000.

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge.

Deck View Due East In HDR

This photo was taken with the Sony A100 using three bracket exposure +/- 2 stops and one shot using the the camera determined correct photo. Click on the photo to fill your screen.

Blessing The Animals

 The Rev Vance Mann, rector at St Thomas Episcopal Church, Burnsville, NC blessing David Johnson's pet Scotty at the service held on October 3, 2010.

Spectacular Sunrise Rendered In Hand-held HDR

Caroline was walking our dog Patch when she called me to look out the office window. The sun was rising rapidly so I grabbed the D90 and rushed out onto the deck and started clicking away. About 15 shots later I realized that this needed HDR treatment.
Because I noted that the shutter speed was very low for taking three photos at the ISO of 200 in aperture mode, I increased it to 800 and set the aperture to f6.5. I then concentrated on a particular cloud to capture the three photos necessary for processing in Photomatix. Yes, I am still using the program to process my HDR photos.
Note that there is still snow on the distant mountains. Be sure to click the thumbnail to fill your screen.

Our Christmas Tree Rendered In HDR

This tree was selected by Caroline from Billy Wilson's tree farm. You can view his farm in HDR in an earlier post. I actually traded for the tree by presenting him with a printed 19x13 copy of the rendered photos that I took in mid October. He actually offered me a few more trees if I wanted them.
This photo took some work but it was worth it -- you do not have to make the journey to the mountains to view its beauty -- just click on the thumbnail to fill your screen.

Caroline's Digital Photo Course Results

These three photos were taken with our Nikon S51 Point-N-Shoot by Caroline during our attendance at a digital photography course this past June conducted at the Mayland Community Collage. I assembled a collage of her photos entitled "Bugs, Butterfly's and Flowers" and and gave it to the instructor for his classroom display. Click on each photo to fill your screen.

HDR Using Our Sony A100

Having devoted a majority of my posts to HDR using the Nikon D90, it got me to thinking about how you could accomplish getting the required minimum exposures on the Sony A100.

A little Google search provided the answer. This is how the photo was exposed:

1. I set the exposure mode (metering mode to multiple segment)
2. Attached my shutter release cable.
3. Set the Mode to "P" for program mode -- some refer this to Professional Mode.
4. Note the Aperture called for by the "P" mode.
5. Switch the Mode setting to "A" for aperture and set the aperture to the value noted in 4.
6. Press the A100 AV button on the top rear of the camera and set the AV to -2.0.
7. On a tripod of course, press the shutter button (in my case the shutter release cable).
8. Press the AV button again and set the AV value to 0.0.
9. Press the shutter release button to expose the second photo.
10. Press the AV button again and set the AV value to +2.0.
11. Press the shutter release button to expose the third and final exposure photo.

Now what do you do with these three photos?

I use Photomatix Pro 3.2 to combine the photos into a "tone-mapped image". There are other programs that will perform that function and the new Adobe Photoshop CS5 will do this function too. But my experience with CS5 has been that to achieve the results that I get with Photomatix takes too long and slider settings are not easily interperted. None of CS5's default settings are of interest to me.

My approach to HDR is to increase the camera's ability to see detail in the shadows and the highlights -- and not to try to turn the photo into a "Starwars" image.

There are some impressive "Starwar Images" that I have viewed but it is not for me.

For more information on Photomatix Pro go here: Photomatix Pro.

Click on the photo to fill your screen.