Category Archives: Let’s Talk Equipment

Cameras, lenses, software. And, what’s the difference between a point and shoot and a high end DSLR?

HDR – Weeds to Rhododendron

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  • Poppin a few with the Nifty Fifty

My new 50mm prime lens is proving to be more fun than I thought. It’s been so long since I used one that I had forgotten just how much of a challenge it can be. Today’s HDR images were all shot with the nifty fifty and processed with Nik HDR Efex Pro and Adobe Photoshop. I’ve used three exposures for each of these images. And, I’ve kept each one as real as possible while taking advantage of the wide tonal latitude.

You might be wondering why I’ve posted this beautiful, yet to bloom, Rhododendron plant when I have “Weeds” first in the title. Well, I doubted that a shot of weeds would be very enticing. So, here come the weeds.

  • Weeds are Just Misunderstood Flowers

These shots all have one thing in common. Weeds predominate! But, don’t they look great with that wispy, warm tone against the darker pines. Anyway, my main focus is to demonstrate the one lens method of shooting multiple views of a single scene. I simply moved myself instead of “zooming in” to get the variations I was looking for.These images were done on a day with such a heavy cloud cover that I welcomed the faster lens though I didn’t really take advantage of the f/1.8 very much. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this prime lens is sharp . . . probably just as sharp as my 105mm Micro. All of these shots were done handheld and holding my breath. Don’t know if that makes a difference but it can’t hurt. Right?

I’ll close this post with one last grassy, weedy, clumpy thing that caught my eye as I was walking through the field back to my car. It seemed to be begging me to take it’s picture. So, I did!Nikon D700 with AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens at ISO 800.

HDR for Real – Need More Exercise?

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That’s Sparky and he could sure use some. Exercise, that is!  He likes to eat and sleep.

  • Poppin a few with the Nifty Fifty

HDR photography is usually done using a tripod to guarantee that each image will be in line with the others in the brackets. Occasionally I will handhold one of my zooms and let Nik HDR Efex Pro fix the alignment issues. But, the results are not always ideal.

The logical conclusion? Carry a couple of fast, prime lenses when a tripod or monopod isn’t available or can’t be used. So, for a few days, I’ve decided to take a step back to when all I ever used were prime lenses. I just recently acquired a very sharp, very light, pretty fast, very inexpensive AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8 D lens. And even though the build quality is lacking compared to my other Nikkor lenses, the image quality is incredible.

I gave myself a challenge to see what I could produce at home. With the limited range of a prime lens, you need to be a little more creative in your positioning. The shots in this post are pretty random but still fun. It’s nice to get a little more exercise while shooting . . . physical and mental.

This very large painting hangs in our living room. Yes, it’s pretty intense and a little less conservative than most of our artwork. But we really like it.
Just a few more snaps. I couldn’t resist this one of Stella, our newest addition. She’s a rescued young mother. Lots of fun! This was taken at f/1.8. I plan to head outside tomorrow to see what the nifty fifty can do. I know I’ll be getting more exercise. 

pseudo-HDR – The Old Warehouse District – Loading

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It seems like every town has an old warehouse district. This one looks like it’s been abandoned for many years. But, what fantastic material for HDR photography. I stumbled onto this loading dock while testing a new (old) zoom lens and I couldn’t resist taking a few shots. Well, the lens is great and I’m very happy to now have a carry around, longer, lighter zoom. The older AF Nikkors really do a great job.

This image was created from one raw capture. I call it pseudo-HDR because, well, that’s what it is. Even though the tonal range is pretty wide, there are still missing highs and lows that one gets used to when working with multiple exposure HDR images.

I used Nik HDR Efex Pro for the tone mapping and worked with about 8 control points to simulate the High Dynamic Range balance that I wanted. The original image had deep shadows that were not what we naturally see. I was able to “lighten it up” in the area at the back side of the loading dock. Adobe Photoshop is usually my “finish up” step now and I normally use four of five layers to do adjustments for Exposure, Hue/Saturation, Shadow/Highlight, Curves and final Sharpening if needed. I chose to not use Curves and allow the image to maintain a more even balance in the light and dark areas.

This shot was handheld with a Nikon D700, 1/30, ISO=3200 and an AF Nikkor 70-210 f/4-5.6 lens set at 70mm and f/32. As I mentioned earlier, the lens is simply fantastic. In the past I’ve carried a Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8 lens around. . .wonderful lens but not lots of fun. So, if you really don’t need the extra speed and do most of your tele work outdoors, the used marked has lots of these older, slower beauties.

Tomorrow is another classic from the old warehouse district.

Real for a Change – Rabat Lighthouse

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I’ve decided to take a short break from HDR and dig into my archives. Lots of stuff from way back. I still love the old transparencies that I shot “back in the day” when life was much less complex. All I needed was a camera, a couple of lenses and places to go.

This is one of my favorite shots from Rabat Morocco. Even though things have changed since I shot this, my memories are still fresh. I’d spend hours wandering around Rabat with my trusty rangefinders (no meters) and an SLR (Nikon F no meter). We’d use the suggested exposure settings that came with the film and make minor adjustments based on what we saw or, if we had the time, what our silenium cell, handheld meters would tell us. I had just purchased a new Gossen Lunna Pro Cds meter. . .quite an improvement, I thought. But that was part of the art of photography.

I always underexposed my transparencies a bit for a little extra color saturation. And we’d push the Ektachromes (shoot at a higher ASA(ISO)) when the light was too dim. The labs would accommodate quite a range.

This image was taken using my Contax II rangefinder with Zeiss 50mm Sonnar 1.5 lens on Kodak Ecktachrome slide film. Yes, pretty grainy if you look close. So don’t look too close. :)  As you can see, the vertical metal focal plane shutter was just a bit off. Every image seemed to have a slightly darker bottom, or in this case right side, of the frame.  What do you expect from a then very old camera purchased from a pawn shop in Pensacola Florida when a Nikon F Photomic was the top of the line 35mm camera.  But that Zeiss lens was incredible, tack sharp with beautiful construction and smooth as butter operation.

I loved doing photography in those days but would never go back to non-digital except for fun, maybe. I currently have a Contax III (the meter still works kinda) with a similar lens that I may play with sometime.

Well, so much for my memory lane stroll. Life is good!

Smartphone HDR Review #1

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Since HDR photography is now available on smart phones, I decided to do a few raw tests with a currently popular smartphone and post this brief review of the results. Being a long time photographer and current advocate of High Dynamic Range photography, the idea of being able to do point and shoot, camera phone HDR seemed like an interesting alternative. I used an iPhone 4s on my last outing to the market to test the process.

I’ve included a few examples of how the phone camera works in various lighting situations. The market uses very dramatic lighting to enhance the visual appearance of the produce and products. This proved to be a challenge for the iPhone. The shots below show the normal exposure on the left and the HDR image on the right. Absolutely NO post processing has been done to the images except for sizing in Photoshop.



As you can see above with the oranges and juice bottles, areas of lower contrast do fairly well. In this instance, store lighting was more subdued. But high contrast, as with the roses above isn’t handled very well. The Cranberries are pretty iffy. The HDR shot looks very bad in Photoshop but seems to present better here thought still pretty washed out.

The wine bottles below didn’t do very well at all. Notice the white labels where both images have overexposed areas that are made worse by the HDR process. And the brilliant colors ended up a little less brilliant.

Just about all of my shots turned out less than satisfactory. I realize that the iPhone camera is not intended to handle the extreme lighting situations that can be encountered. But, for a person wanting to add a little more realism to their photos, it does an adequate job. I’m sure that I will be taking advantage of smartphone cameras in the future when cameras, lenses, tripods, etc., are not available.

With the current technology, some really great photographs are being produced with smartphone cameras. I will be presenting another example of Smartphone HDR using the 5mp camera in a Windows Phone 7, Dynamic Range (DR) mode. I Know, it’s not called HDR but the results are very similar.

So, wanting to see how the phone camera result would work with tone mapping in HDR Efex Pro, I produced this image from the HDR example above. I also used Adobe Photoshop to balance the Hue/Saturation for more realistic colors and Shadow/Highlight adjustments to, well, fix the shadows and highlights. All of the necessary tonal elements are present. The image just needed more post-processing.