HDR compare and contrast

I stumbled upon HDR One magazine the other day and obviously it's a great resource for the type of photography that I most commonly do. As well as the articles themselves, it's also provided some great suggestions of HDR software out there. I've picked up a demo of Machinery to try it out and it's definitely an interesting contrast with Photomatix. Machinery does profess an intent towards natural HDR, which isn't usually what I aim for but maybe I should. All the more reason to experiment.

I must emphasise at this point that I have, at time of writing, only had to run a couple of images through it so there's lots more exploration to be done but here are two images- the first done in Photomatix, the second done in Machinery: The difference is obvious- Machinery certainly does create a more naturalistic HDR image. Also look at how crisp that bastard is! Not only does Machinery provide built-in sharpening but the halo-ing effect (so often the bane of HDR) is reduced, presumably due to the more natural look. Take a look at the streetlights on the left of the image, for example (both in the foreground and the BG) and the superior detail on the shelf of Buddha figures. It's also astonishingly fast and does a genuine live change as opposed to Photomatix's two-stage 'guestimate' process, which has always bothered me, to be honest.

Obviously this image comparison also depends on the settings and post-HDR-processing each image has been run through. They've both had the contrast lowered and brightness increased. The Photomatix image was sharpened a touch and the Machinery one had it's saturation upped a bit since lowering the contrast left it a little washed out (or maybe I'm just too used to Photomatix output).

Overall, perhaps as you'd expect, it seems that the different softwares both have areas in which they are superior but it certainly seems that the de facto industry standard position that Photomatix seems to enjoy can be challenged. In any case, I definitely need to do some more experimentation with Machinery to see what I can get out of it but first experience has definitely left a positive impression.

More exposure

A couple of bits of exposure over the last couple of days- first, a photo I took of a statue of Cupid in... Norway (or was it Denmark?) headed up an article on Wired.com. It's not my favourite photo by any means, but it serves the purpose. Then today, my city's local newspaper used an HDR photo I took of a local landmark in this article.

This is where stuff gets interesting- MEN didn't tell me they were using my picture, nor did they link to my Flickr account- a randomer commented on my Flickr account telling me that they'd used it. Then one of the other photographers whose photos had also been used. While it's fine for them to use my photo by the terms of the creative commons licensing I've placed on them, the other photographer enforces copyright on his and they'd not contacted him prior to using his photo either. Poor show for a professional publication.

I'm just grateful of the exposure, however, even if they're not generating me traffic through a link.

Southeast Asia photos

I struggle to know what to write about travel photos so I think it's safe to say I'll never be a travel blogger. It suffices to say that, for my Southeast Asia trip, I took in a great number of locations over three weeks and got a few dozen decent photos out of it. In lieu of a more wordy description, here's a small selection of the photos taken on that trip. The full selection and perhaps a bit more info on each shot can be found in the Flickr set.

Southeast Asia trip #1

It's been a while since I posted and at least part of the reason for this is that I spent the first part of the year touring around a large slice of Southeast Asia.

I took a huge number of photos of course (around 3000) so it's taking forever to process them. One thing I've found myself doing is taking nothing but HDR cityscape and architectural study. These do tend to be some of my stronger pieces but I do need to be mindful that I don't miss opportunities to capture other subjects better suited to different techniques.

Anyway, even the HDR ones are proving tricky, possibly because I still need to better understand my HDR software but I'll continue to plug away at it. In the meantime, here's one that's come out successfully- the view of Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) from the bar at the Sheraton hotel. And happy New Year, everyone!


Unfortunately I had to take the shot freehand- no tripod available, which would have made it crisper but it came out well, considering.

Contrasting views

Not a huge amount to say by way of photographic updates but I've had a couple of nice sunsets viewable from my apartment so here they are captured in HDR. The first one has an off-the-shelf filter applied beyond the HDR process whereas the second is straight-up HDR with only the usual brightness/contrast/sharpness tweaks.

Halloween 2012

I was invited to a Halloween party held by a colleague this year and this allows me to indulge my love of fancy dress that appears to have developed in adulthood.

I had an idea for a two-tone approach of a black and white based around a suit, white facepaint and contacts. This did mean that I had to remove all of my hair, however, since it didn't comply with the colour scheme.

Quite pleased with the end result since there were a lot of unknowns (never used contacts, glued on prosthetics or shaved my head before) but the whole outfit only cost me £7 since I just had to buy the glue and the contacts, the rest of the outfit being recycled from previous work events.

D600 revisited

I've continued to follow the D600 after its ridiculously pricy UK launch and, at time of writing, it's come down in price 21% on Amazon to a much more reasonable £1540. This puts it much more within my price range for what I'd be prepared to pay for a camera at this level, i.e. entry-level full-frame, but there was one more disappointment when we had the release announcement which is that it only does three-stage Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB). For those you who aren't aware, AEB makes HDR photography (which I do a lot of) very easy- I switch it on, hold down my shutter release and my camera will take three photos at varying levels of exposure for my HDR software to combine.

...and that's my point, this is what I do with my current camera, a D7000, and the D600 doesn't give me any more exposures. The D800 will let you do up to seven so I was hoping for at least five from a camera that costs twice as much as my 'humble' D7000.

Or so I thought, but then reading about how the D600's sensor already has a superior dynamic range and so each of those three exposures is still delivering more from an HDR perspective. Just how much more is a bit more difficult to quantify.

I also realised that, in order to get the benefit of the new camera, I'd also have to replace all my DX (cropped) format lenses so I'd be looking at at least a £3000 spend in total.

Maybe not something I'll be doing too soon, then...

Derwent Valley

I went hiking in the Upper Derwent Valley with a friend on Saturday. It's the first time I've been hiking in quite a while. Since I took up photography, in fact. I rarely have an opportunity to shoot rural landscapes so I relished the chance and got some decent photos, quite possibly some of my best, despite still suffering from lens artifacts. I'll do the usual of trying to clean up the source images before pushing it through the HDR process again and I'm going to invest in a proper camera cleaning kit (or just pay a professional to do it for me).

HDR and freckling

A colleague who is similarly photographic suggested we go out of an evening to take some HDR shots. I think she knows I do quite a bit of HDR and was keen to see what it was about. I got some good results but my I'm struggling with freckling in some many shots taken later in the evening. The HDR process exacerbates the problem but I can see the marks on the source images. I've cleaned the lens and am certain it's spotless, I've even cleaned my mirror but the freckling still occurs. So it could be my sensor or failing that, I'm left with the terrible prospect that it's dirt inside the lens itself. Whatever the cause, it needs to be sorted before I go away for new year. I'll try to test the theory by taking a shot that freckles on my wide-angle lens, replacing the lens and seeing if it still occurs. If it does, it's the mirror or sensor in the camera body, if not, it's the lens. At least that'll give me a better idea of where I stand.

Unless of course it's both lenses.

Zombie

One night last week I attended 2.8 Hours Later, a 'zombie chase game' through the streets of my home city. Essentially, you report to an abandoned mill (something we have in abundance) and are sent off in teams at 80 second intervals with a map and a grid reference to get to next. There will be a scenario with actors at the grid reference the outcome of which will include your next destination and there are zombies en route/at said destination. The zombies got me right before the end and thus I was made up as a zombie for the party at the end. The resultant drinking assisted me zombie impersonation for this portrait I took when I got home (taken on my wide-angle lens, no less) but assisted my photography skills less. Nonethless, it's a decent self portrait, augmented with a vignette in GIMP. The event repeated every night until Sunday but unfortunately I was atypically busy and so didn't get to lurk and take photos of others playing the game. Here's hoping they repeat it next year.