Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Workman's hut

Workman's hut, originally uploaded by nzcjs.

I was really quite taken with this little "bothy" or workman's hut up near the entrance to Pupu Springs near Takaka, New Zealand. I've been quite intrigued with single image HDRs and thought this image may be an ideal candidate for a trial. Perhaps let me know what you think?


The original image was taken RAW and then two other images created from it using Nikon's NX2 at -2 and +2 stops exposure differences to give me three shots. These three shots were then aggregated in Photomatix Pro and twiddled a little in an attempt to increase the contrasts in the weatherboards on the hut.

All that seemed to happen was the skies became more dramatic and the colours in the foliage rather more intense. Overall I don't think it's that bad, but you may think otherwise? It's certainly a more interesting image than the original!

Why try a single image HDR? I suppose one of the issues I'd had was my inability to select scenes that remained static whilst I made my 5, 7 or 9 shots. The wind invariably moved the trees and bushes, people, vehicles or birds moved which all contributed to a muddy, out of focus imprecise image. Not the best really. So far I've been quite pleased - I wonder whether I'm better using RAW instead of JPEG, but I'll play with that and see what happens. You may have a comment on the relative benefits of RAM over JPEG in HDR images.

The image below was taken on Mount Roberts near St. Arnaud on a breezy day. There's considerable movement in the grass and leaves which leads to a poorly focussed image. Then again, you may like the effect?


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