Trees Comparison

[Bynx]

<Rant deleted> You should Learn the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO and what they mean. There is a lot of basic stuff to learn before you should even be thinking about HDR. When you learn that stuff then setting your camera manually for 9 shots will come easily.

 

[jake337]

in my experience you get way more haloing when you try to tonemap a single exposure than a 5 bracket.

The auto bracketing on my Nikon D5100 is only 3 exposures, how do you get 5? Manually? And if so, how much would you separate each one?

You could separate each one based on metering the scene. Meter for the brightest area, meter for the darkest area, and somewhere in between.

 

[DGMPhotography]

a stop is twice (or half if you're going down) the light. I use shutter speed for HDR brackets so that you have the same DOF, not f/stop (which controls aperture and would thus change the DOF, which would look all kinds of screwy).

also, I kind of lied, as I don't use exactly half stops, but the method I use tends to be easier to do the calculations in my head and is close enough. and really going this small in changes is sort of overkill anyway.

So, if I check the sky and figure that I want it to be exposed at 1/1000 of a sec, and I check the darkest part of my photo and figure that it will be well exposed at 1/30, then my bracket will look something like: 1/1000, 1/750, 1/500, 1/375, 1/250, 1/200, 1/125, 1/60, 1/45, 1/30

Oh cool! Thanks a lot! I had the terms "stop" and "fstop" confused. I knew about fstop controlling depth of field though. But again, thanks! Really good info!

 

[DGMPhotography]

<Rant deleted> You should Learn the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO and what they mean. There is a lot of basic stuff to learn before you should even be thinking about HDR. When you learn that stuff then setting your camera manually for 9 shots will come easily.

Bynx, come on man, enough with the hateful stuff! Really, you could say things you want in a much nicer way. I did not get the chance to see your rant before it was deleted, but seriously. I appreciate your input, just not the mean stuff. Instead of telling me what I'm doing wrong, perhaps you could offer some useful information? Such as, what IS the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO??

 

[KmH]

You can change lens aperture by a stop. You can change shutter speed by a stop. And, you can change ISO by a stop.

Most DSLR cameras come with a default setting that changes any of those 3 - aperture, shutter speed, ISO - in 1/3 stop steps. Most DSLR cameras will let you change the default steps to 1/2 stop or whole stop steps.

The lens aperture - f-stop - is only one factor that controls DoF. Distance to the focus point, and lens focal length also have significant effect on DoF.

For most HDR exposure sequences you want the DoF to be the same (same lens aperture) for each exposure and only vary the shutter speed or the ISO to record all of the dynamic range in the scene you are wanting to shoot.

Fortunately with shutter speed or ISO, a stop is a true 2x relationship such that a shutter speed of 1/100 lets in 2 times more light than a shutter speed of 1/200, or ISO 800 is 2 times more sensitive to light than ISO 400 is.

With lens aperture f/2 lets in twice as much light as f/2.8 does, or f/5.6 lets in twice as much light as f/8 does. With lens aperture the relationship is based on the square root of 2 - 1/4142. (2 times 1.4142 = 2.8, and 5.6 times 1.4142 = 7.9 which is rounded to 8)

 

[KmH]

<Rant deleted> You should Learn the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO and what they mean. There is a lot of basic stuff to learn before you should even be thinking about HDR. When you learn that stuff then setting your camera manually for 9 shots will come easily.

Bynx, come on man, enough with the hateful stuff! Really, you could say things you want in a much nicer way. I did not get the chance to see your rant before it was deleted, but seriously. I appreciate your input, just not the mean stuff. Instead of telling me what I'm doing wrong, perhaps you could offer some useful information? Such as, what IS the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO??

Entire books have been written to explain the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO. Plus, by relying on self-help you gain the added benefit of discovering information you didn't know you also need to know.

 

[DGMPhotography]

<Rant deleted> You should Learn the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO and what they mean. There is a lot of basic stuff to learn before you should even be thinking about HDR. When you learn that stuff then setting your camera manually for 9 shots will come easily.

Bynx, come on man, enough with the hateful stuff! Really, you could say things you want in a much nicer way. I did not get the chance to see your rant before it was deleted, but seriously. I appreciate your input, just not the mean stuff. Instead of telling me what I'm doing wrong, perhaps you could offer some useful information? Such as, what IS the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO??

Entire books have been written to explain the relationship between Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO. Plus, by relying on self-help you gain the added benefit of discovering information you didn't know you also need to know.

Thanks KmH, good stuff. I was just saying, Bynx doesn't need to be so offensive with whatever it is that he is saying. I really appreciate your advice though.

 

[Steve5D]

Don't worry about what other people think you should do. If you want to do something, do it. Pay attention to those who try to help, and not to those who try to dissuade you.

People learn differently. I suspect you're the type of person who learns best by actually doing as opposed to sitting in front of a computer and reading page after page of stuff until your eyes glaze over. That works for some people, but I think most people learn by actually getting out there and hitting the shutter.

Oh, and I give you about a week before that Photomatix watermark drives you nuts!

 

[jake337]

Don't worry about what other people think you should do. If you want to do something, do it. Pay attention to those who try to help, and not to those who try to dissuade you.

People learn differently. I suspect you're the type of person who learns best by actually doing as opposed to sitting in front of a computer and reading page after page of stuff until your eyes glaze over. That works for some people, but I think most people learn by actually getting out there and hitting the shutter.

Oh, and I give you about a week before that Photomatix watermark drives you nuts!

It only took me two photos to drive me nuts...

 

[Steve5D]

Don't worry about what other people think you should do. If you want to do something, do it. Pay attention to those who try to help, and not to those who try to dissuade you.

People learn differently. I suspect you're the type of person who learns best by actually doing as opposed to sitting in front of a computer and reading page after page of stuff until your eyes glaze over. That works for some people, but I think most people learn by actually getting out there and hitting the shutter.

Oh, and I give you about a week before that Photomatix watermark drives you nuts!

It only took me two photos to drive me nuts...

Same here...

 

[fjrabon]

side note, I really wish there was a way you could create a hybrid bracket method, where your camera would first start by adjusting the shutter speed, but then when it got to some predetermined level, it would begin bracketing with ISO, and do this automatically. This would be nice for shooting quickly moving clouds, where the end exposures end up being long to the point of losing definition in the moving clouds.

Of course you can do it manually, but sometimes the delay is such that you get a lot of ghosting in the clouds if you do HDR, because it took you too long to change both shutter speed and ISO and the clouds moved in between shots too much.

 

[Bynx]

Clouds arent too much of a problem if you shoot as quickly as you can and use the deghosting feature of Photomatix. Unless you have a high end camera like the D4, most DSLRs can only do 3 shots AEB. I shoot whatever number of shots I need manually. Its not as fast as machine gun fire of the D4 but it gets the job done with no mistakes. Find your highlights so there are no blinkies then shoot reducing your shutter speed by 1 fstop for each shot you need until the darkest areas are covered.

 

[jake337]

side note, I really wish there was a way you could create a hybrid bracket method, where your camera would first start by adjusting the shutter speed, but then when it got to some predetermined level, it would begin bracketing with ISO, and do this automatically. This would be nice for shooting quickly moving clouds, where the end exposures end up being long to the point of losing definition in the moving clouds.

Of course you can do it manually, but sometimes the delay is such that you get a lot of ghosting in the clouds if you do HDR, because it took you too long to change both shutter speed and ISO and the clouds moved in between shots too much.

If you have an android tablet you could also download an app to control your camera tethered. I'm not sure if they have it working for nikon yet but you can set up a 45 shot bracket. I'm also not sure how fast it will take the exposures.

tethered shooting from a smart phone ! - Open Photography Forums

 

[Bynx]

I have the app and the Android Asus Transformer Pad. It works with the Nikon and Canon with an extra feature for the Canon. It will take up to 15 bracketed exposures. Only problem I see is it will only save as Jpeg and only to the tablet. Its slower than mole asses in January. I can see the app useful for focus stacking which isnt time dependent.

 

[fjrabon]

Clouds arent too much of a problem if you shoot as quickly as you can and use the deghosting feature of Photomatix. Unless you have a high end camera like the D4, most DSLRs can only do 3 shots AEB. I shoot whatever number of shots I need manually. Its not as fast as machine gun fire of the D4 but it gets the job done with no mistakes. Find your highlights so there are no blinkies then shoot reducing your shutter speed by 1 fstop for each shot you need until the darkest areas are covered.

The loss in image quality you get from deghosting always annoys me a tiny bit.

I mean on the scale of big deals, this minor annoyance is pretty far down there. But it is enough to drive me to manual exposure blending from time to time. That way you just use one exposure for the sky/clouds, set to whatever ISO and SS you like, and you don't have to worry about ghosting effects, since that part of the scene is just one exposure.

Basically I sort of mentally divide the frame by exposure zones, then blend my bracketed exposures in piece by piece.