10 replies to this topic

[midgetyone]

Hi all,

Well it has been a long time since I have been around. I have been so busy throughout the year I could write a novel. Time to get back into the swing of me + camera time. I have been experimenting in the realm of HDR and I must say, very interesting. The camera is currently getting it's CCD cleaned (yup for those of you who remembered me asking all that time ago where to get it done, it's only just getting done now ) I never got the chance to venture around Tassie this year and will have to wait unti latel next year as I will be changing jobs in February which means no leave for little ole me . I am however going to try and embark on as many of the 60 great short walks as possible during weekends .

I ended up buying the Ford Falcon AUIII XR6 and am very happy with it. Joined the Tasmanian Ford Performance Vehicles club so I hope I get some good photos of events to share.

Look forward to being around a bit more

Cheers
Chris

[Mystic]

Busy time from the sounds of things Chris, will be good to see you more active and look forward to your shots All the best with the new job. Not too foul a little car you bought yourself there.

[Shane V]

Hi Chris. Nice to see you again. Sounds like you have had a busy time of it this year, I know what that's like HDR is fun hey? I use it occasionally myself, with mixed success. I do remember you asking about CCD cleaning...mine still needs it, well a deep clean anyway, cause I do give it a blow out every now and then, although i should do it more often.
Looking forward to your shots from the walks and from any Ford events you may attend.

[dave]

howdy and welcome back,....not a bad choice of vehicle, should have a wee bit of pleasure with it.....had another electric window actuator mechanism replaced yesterday ($550) 2 in 2 years, last one was passenger side so this time the drivers side got jealous and gave up the ghost, gotta love the modern cars......

as for the sensor on the pictorial filing machine I just did mine myself about a fortnight ago......no big deal just buy a good sensor kit with the appropriate size swabs (cropped sensor as in 50D or full as in the 5D) from ebay and go to "sensor cleaning" on you tube and Bob's your Aunty!.......turned out my "spot's" were on the mirror but as they say in the flick's "that's a whole new bundle of jellyfish!", had a bit of fluff on it before that, got my Giotto blower and chased it all around inside the camera body for about ten minutes,......it finally gave up and came out, .......bit of fun!

absotively love "H.D.R."......use it most times when I have all my gear with me,....a tripod is a necessary piece of kit but a bit of a pain in the posterior lugging it around the back blocks.........

[midgetyone]

Hmmm I have experimented with HDR from single RAW images and for the times I don't have a tripod, and using the align_image_stack function from Hugin is very useful too

[dave]

I find it near impossible to align the images without a tripod, it could be done by placing the camera on a stable surface I guess but a fractional movement will create "ghosting" which I find very hard to remove........I haven't mucked about with RAW as yet, still haven't had the gumption to go too far from auto although i do shoot mainly in AV mode and some TV for water and suchlike, the camera is far smarter than me when it comes to working out shutter speeds and exposure rates, mind you it wouldn't have to be too damn smart to do that!

my choices for stacking are the Hydra pro (currently half price from the App's store) and PSE 9 with the "plugin".........i trialled PS CS5 but at over $5,000.00 i won't be buying that anytime soon

I have a Slik U8000 tripod that I bought a million years ago which is not too bad but I am thinking of upgrading to a manfroto with either a ballhead or some such....but "other things" are nicking my money as fast as i make it lately

[Mystic]

I like playing with HDR when the scene is right, and usually use 5 shots bracketed +/- 1.5 EV steps (camera will do that automatically for me). A tripod is very handy, but not essential and I use Photomatix Pro to process the stack. It will align images well 99% of the time. There is a free trial of the program available (google photomatix). I always shoot in RAW though and find that Photomatix does a pretty good job without having to do any conversions before processing.

[dave]

I also have use photomatix pro but often find that if the images are a little OOF or not aligning correctly then it dummy spits.....my 50D will fire 3 shots of +or -

[Shane V]

One thing I will say is make sure your white balance is set for the scene...having the wrong white balance will have a bad effect on the final image...sometimes it can be corrected with a lot of processing, other times it can't. But in saying that...the effect can be interesting.

[midgetyone]

hugin.sourceforge.net

What I use for all my panoramas and image alignments. Awesome tool, free, easy to use and never had any issues. To align a group of images for HDR you need to use the align_image_stack function which isn't part of the GUI but still easy to use. You can also use the enfuse function to do exposure blending between the images which does a nice job for a quick HDR photo I put so much confidence in it that I hardly ever use the tripod for HDR, never get ghosting etc.

[Shane V]

will have to check that one out Chris... Thanks