I took the train down to London this evening to take a few shots of St Pauls. The original idea was to do some long exposures at sunset, but when it started to rain I had a rapid change of plans. It was all a bit rushed but I cracked off about 70 shots, with a few bracketed exposures in the mix. Some of the better results, c/o Photomatix:

For both shots, I bracketed two stops either side of the original. The picture on the left was exposed at 0.8 seconds at F22, ISO 100. The second is 0.5 seconds at F18, again at ISO 100. Shame about the cab…

I’ve had a couple of goes at Photmatix over the last few months, and thought I’d give it another whirl with one of the images from the Highgate trip. As I was working from a single image, I had to copy the original RAW image to 3 TIFFs, with one overexposed by 2 stops, one overexposed by the same amount, and then the third as shot – all pretty standard stuff.

The results are… interesting I think. The original shot has blown out highlights due to a relatively gloomy foreground, and quite a bright sky, something that would have made it an interesting candidate for a tripod based bracketed exposure:

[F8, 1/20th second, FL 15mm, ISO 200 – I managed to prop myself against an upright to get a relatively sharp result at this shutter speed]. Here is the HDR image:

It really lifts the image.

This is the first photo I’ve attempted to mix black and white with colour:

I’ve taken a couple of bites at it, most recently with a tablet [as in the input peripheral] which I’ve borrowed from someone from work. It’s probably not a bad shot to try to apply the technique to in terms of subject matter. It’s just that it betrays the shallow depth of field towards the top of the image. The original shot was at F4, 47mm on my 28-235mm zoom, and shot at ISO 200. I’ve used a couple of layers: the first is an adjustment layer -> Hues/Saturation, which I’ve reduced the saturation to -100. I’ve then created a second levels layer, and used that to increase the contrast a bit. Then back in the saturation layer, I’ve painted the colour back in.