High Dynamic Pumpkin

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I like High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography although I must admit that my results are still unpredictable. A new book, “Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography” by Ferrell McCollough, is helping me to become more consistent in my HDR processing.

This HDR image was made using four shots from my Canon G9. The G9 was in Av mode, ISO 400, manual focus. ISO 400 helped to avoid some very long exposures and also to dodge the Av “bug” that limits shutter speeds to 1 second. The four shots were combined in Photomatix and also tone mapped in Photomatix before final touchups, including noise reduction with Noiseware, in Photoshop CS4.

As an 12x18 inch on canvas, I like it a lot. A screen sized version is in my G9 gallery on SmugMug.

Why Av mode? A neat trick is to use Av mode and also set auto exposure bracketing. This produces three shots. Next, dial in some negative exposure compensation and fire again to get three more shots. Finally, dial in some positive exposure compensation and get three more shots. Depending on the settings for exposure bracketing and exposure compensation, some of the shots may be at the same exposure but you’ll only touch the camera twice during the process.

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