Saturday, November 6, 2010

G12: Back to the Lake

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With the Lensmate adapters, a polarizing filter and a graduated neutral density filter, I returned to the ski lake scene to make comparative pictures.  The G12 was mounted on a tripod and set for ISO 80, Av mode, f4 and the widest angle (28mme) focal length.  The actual exposure varied with the filters.  I tried to work quickly but still took several minutes.

The photo below is the base case without any filters.  Shutter speed was 1/125 second.  Notice the nice reflection in the lake; however some of the dark areas lack detail.



The photo below was made by adding the graduated neutral density filter.  Notice that some of the reflection has disappeared.  I think that the lighting changed slightly but I didn't notice it at the time.    Shutter speed was 1/160 second.




The next picture is with the polarizing filter.  The effect of polarization can be seen in the LCD display screen.  I rotated the filter to darken the sky and bring out the clouds.  Exposure was 1/40 second.  Nice, but notice that the reflection is significantly reduced.




Finally, without using filters, I made nine images for constructing an HDR picture.  I set auto exposure bracketing at -2, 0, +2 to get three shots; then changed to -1 exposure compensation and repeated; then changed to +1 exposure compensation and repeated.  This procedure gives exposures at -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3 and two duplicates.  I used the seven shots to make an HDR 32 bit image using Photomatix and, with a bit of trial and error, selected the tone mapped version called "Compressor".  A little more post processing in Photoshop produced the version below.




For the HDR image, I did pump up the color saturation a bit but was attempting to tone down the sky and bring out the shadows without creating the overdone appearance that gives HDR a bad name.

The HDR part of the project was a last minute decision (I was in a hurry to set up for Halloween) and I completely forgot about using the G12 "HDR" function so that comparison will have to wait a while.
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