The first couple of shots as I was making my way down to the falls were pretty good, as the sky was cloudy and the light was soft and even. When I eventually got down to the falls though, that's when the fun started. The sun came out and it was a beautiful day -- unfortunately this meant that the top of the falls were basked in beautiful light and the bottom was in sheer darkness. Now, the human eye can take all the info in and tell the brain to underexpose the top and bring up the bottom to make it all even. So it looks nice to you. But the camera cannot expose this scene properly, because of the dynamic range of the camera - it is a lot smaller than the human eye/brain combination. That's where the HDR processing comes in.
You start with exposing the scene properly for the middle, the main subject. Then you bracket that exposure either 1 or 2 stops up and down. This means that you under expose by 2 stops, 1 stop then over expose by 2 stops and finally 1 stop.
I shot this image with +/- 1 stop as it was not that bad. You can tell by looking at your shots to see what the result is.
Next, I downloaded a trial of Phootmatix Pro v4.2 You can download the trial and check it out before you pay. The problem is your image is watermarked. But at $99 for the full program, it's not that bad.... probably one of the cheaper parts of photography. Besides, it rescues the day in a lot of cases...
To me, this shot is a little overcooked - meaning that I know it's an HDR and it's not quite to my satisfaction as well. This was my first shot though. I will be playing with this more .... :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment