Sunrise on my D80

[carlcmc]

Taken this morning without a tripod when I happened to look out the window and see the clouds.

One RAW exposed to -2,-1,0,+1,+2 and processed with photomatrix.

CC welcome.

My own comment is that I overexposed a portion of the sky.

Large size here

[Steve Foss]

Carl, I don't know photomatrix. Do you mean it combined the properly exposed portions off all the images into one image?

It's a nice composition, and there's virtually no way you could avoid overexposing tiny bits of highlight here and there. It does no harm to the image, which depends more on the brooding mid and dark tones for its impact.

My guess is that, even though you just bought your Nikon digital gear, you've had a fair bit of photographic experience before that. Yes?

[carlcmc]

I'm having fun with the new Nikon.

Photomatrix is a program for tonal mapping to generate an image that has a higher apparant dynamic range than what is possible typically to generate with one photo.

the below is a post I just made minutes ago in a flickr discussion about HDR techniques.

"I have done each of the several variations

-multiple jpegs from auto bracketing

-multiple jpegs from manual changing the shutter speed

-one raw processed internally in photomatrix to an hdr

-one raw to generate multiple jpegs and then hdred

-one raw to generate multiple 16 bit tiffs and hdred

-multiple raws in photomatrix

-multiple raws >jpeg/tiff

Have to say that I love the method of one raw to multiple 16bit tiffs for simplicity and ability to capture movement

You can get dramatic tonal range using multiple raws however.

this morning I took one raw, extracted 5 TIFFs (-2,-1,0,+1, +2) and hdred them in photomatrix.

the 16 bit tiff before hand and then exported as 16 bit tiff allows for more depth and detail control in photoshop editing. "

This is allows you to generate a final image that maintains the details in the highlights as well as the details in the shadows to a greater degree than a single jpg exposure.

My experience with photography begain in 2001 with my first digital camera. I began shooting in manual mode in 2004, and this is my first dSLR. I know many times some of the technical details, but I have much I want to learn and improve in composition etc.

thanks for the comments, carl.

[Dbl]

Carl, its a nice image but it does look as if you tried to darken the highlights to try and recover them correct? I can see a number of dark areas where it appears you painted in to try to recover the highlights. Blown highlights are....well blown highlights, there is no way to recover them. As Steve said thats not all that bad in situations like this.

[carlcmc]

yes, some of the highlights were lost. In the middle (vertically) and on the left hand side you can see one example of an oval area that is white/gray. That is an example of one of the blown highlights. The sky has dark sections in the clouds that are real details from the several different exposures that were blended. I unfortunately ignored the histogram until i had loaded up the images on the computer and then moment was passed.

[Steve Foss]

Ignored the histogram? Bad Carl! Bad Carl! Just kidding. We've all done it from time to time.

[hobbydog]

Here is a pretty good link to explain what Carl is trying to do.

[note from admin: please see forum rules before posting again. Thank you.]

So how do you like photmatrix? Is it relatively easy to use?

[carlcmc]

i prefer using photomatrix rather than the photoshop cs2 hdr routines. you get more flexibility with photomatrix. if you browse flickr and search for hdr and read the discussions, you can find guides and links to guides on how to do it. It is very easy to use. the most important thing is making sure you have good source material. After that, just fiddling around with the controls is simple.