Hey guys [first attempt know it's not great] [Archive]

JoYork

29th of December 2008 (Mon), 13:23

Hi Piye,

Hmm.. where to start, to be honest. First of all I would venture out somewhere with your camera to try to find something more interesting to photograph. My back yard is really dull but 5 minutes away there's a small wood where people walk their dogs and a 15 minute car drive takes me into the countryside. Wander until something catches your eye then decide how best to frame it.

OK that's what to shoot out of the way. Next up is technique:

If you have a tripod, take it with you. Tripods are invaluable for decent HDR images as they first of all keep the camera steady so you don't get any camera shake (useful when the light's low) and secondly they allow you to keep the camera perfectly still when you tell the camera to take 3 shots of the same scene all at different exposures. This will allow you to blend them together later on to make an HDR image.

HDR stands for high dynamic range and is best used when the scene you're shooting contains so much variation from light to dark that you can't expose the scene properly in your camera in a single shot. Imagine you're shooting a landscape and there's a brilliant bright sky and a much darker ground. Our eyes dart around and can see the scene perfectly well, but a camera doesn't work the same way and therefore doesn't have the same effective dynamic range that our eyes do.

So, you could take a shot and expose the beautiful sky perfectly, but the ground would be in shadow. Or you could get a good exposure on the ground but the sky is whited out. Taking several photos of the same scene would allow you to blend the exposures together, either manually (in a photo editing package which has layers) or with a specialist HDR program like Photomatix.

Some of us cheat and make what's called pseudo-HDR images. These are made from a single exposure, but developed as several different exposures from the same file. So, we take a photo (shooting in RAW mode makes this much easier), then make 3 jpegs out of it - one underexposed, one overexposed and one just right.

It's not a true HDR image but it does bring out more detail than a plain old jpeg off the camera would do.

russellsnr2

29th of December 2008 (Mon), 13:45

Hello, 1st I would agree with JoYork. Looking at the pic I would guess you live in the UK if so I gotta second the motion there are a lot of very good opotunities around the UK no matter where you are.
And I always point this site out as a starting point.
http://stuckincustoms.com/2006/06/06/548/

and this

http://beforethecoffee.wordpress.com/photomatix-tutorial/
hope it helps happy new year