First Night HDR - Is this ok?

[MohaimenK]

I've been busy with long exposure night shots to be honest. I took a pic of a church where only one part of it is lit up and everything else is dark. This is the result I got. Not sure of it though

 

[Robin Usagani]

3 shots or 1 shot? The little tower is a little dark.

 

[MohaimenK]

Oh, here's what it looked like before HDR

 

[Robin Usagani]

Yeah.. pretty good man. What do you use to process it?

 

[MohaimenK]

3 shots or 1 shot?

3 but I didn't know what settings to use. I did the whole -2 0 +2 exposure but I wasn't sure of the shutter speed I should have used for it.

 

[MohaimenK]

BTW, I do actually like the original shot myself. I like how it came out, being mostly dark one part lit up. But I guess people didn't like it over at the "beginners" section.

 

[Robin Usagani]

Well.. i am not an expert yet with DOF. But you need to make the aperture smaller so you have deeper depth so both towers will be sharp. Then you meter it so you have EV=0. Use the AEB and do -2,0,+2 (you have have to do less than 2).

 

[Robin Usagani]

?? Just use your meter to figure out the shutter speed? Put the bar in the middle.

3 shots or 1 shot?

3 but I didn't know what settings to use. I did the whole -2 0 +2 exposure but I wasn't sure of the shutter speed I should have used for it.

 

[MohaimenK]

?? Just use your meter to figure out the shutter speed? Put the bar in the middle.

What do you mean? I tried different meter settings in my camera but I am not 100% sure how the camera metering system works. I haven't played with it much yet.

 

[Robin Usagani]

Everytime you press the shutter half way, look at the exposure on your screen that looks like this:

,,,,,|,,,,,

PUt the Bar in the middle by slowing down the shutter or making it faster. Aperture and ISO will also affect this. Not sure what mode you are on but you want to make sure your Aperture and ISO stay the same between 3 shots. YOu are just changing the speed of the shutter.

 

[MohaimenK]

Oh, I mostly shoot in Manual mode but I think it was AV what I used to get the 3 exposure shots. I meant about metering in the camera. I haven't played with it much.

 

[Mendoza]

The first image might benefit from some cropping similar to the way the original image is cropped. Here's the gist of what I mean (sorry if it looks like butchery; there are many ways to crop and I went far in this instance):

I say try losing the bench and reducing the amount of sky in the frame. (One man's opinion of course.)

 

[AverageJoe]

Nice subject! Great way of positioning the moon. I do like Mendoza's take on it, the moving leaves in the top left get difficult when you are shooting multiple exposures, not much you can do about that.