Conifer Grove for a stroll.

f16, 1/1600sec ISO 100

It was such a lovely evening that we decided a walk was a good idea, especially if there was a chance of a sunset over the water.  An acquaintance of mine had emailed me with some sunsets and was asking a few questions.  I thought I'd take the camera along with me and take note of what I did ... and didn't do when taking sunset shots. Bear in mind that this really was a evening walk with my wife, so I didn't take my tripod which os really something I like to use for landscapes and sunset photographs.

f16, 1/800sec ISO 100

Well, to be honest, I like to use the tripod wherever possible!  Anyway, back to the sunsets!  Often I find that what I thought I saw as the sun started to set, and what I captured with the camera are quite disimilar.  It's not a fault of the camera, and I suspect it's not a vivid imagination on my part, it's just the way the camera interprets the scene and exposes the frame for the available light.  Colours also tend to appear less vivid or intense as I remembered them, but much of this can be resolved when you get home.

f16, 1/400sec ISO 100

One of the reasons for taking the tripod is ensure that if multiple shots are taken there's a good chance I can line up the images if I was to blend any together.  I was told some time ago by an HDR guru that he takes seven shots at 1EV intervals when shooting into the sun, so that's that I did last night.  Down the left hand side of this post you'll see seven images at varying exposures and can see how the scene varies as exposure times are modified.  The one at 1/400 second is the one the camera thought was the "correct exposure".

f16, 1/200sec ISO 100

As you look at the images you'll notice how foreground detail is lost in the top shots, but preserved in the bottom shots.  However, sun, cloud and sky detail is lost in the bottom shots, but preserved to some extent in the upper shots.  The problem with this scene is the large variance in light levels that are difficult to capture in one image.  A "trick" sometimes used by photographers with digital cameras is to blend two or more images to preserve the details in the very light and very dark areas into a single image.

f16, 1/100sec ISO 100

This can be achieved by using layers in Photoshop and "painting-in" the lost detail in one frame with the detail from another, or, several frames may be combined "automatically" with HDR software.  In this post I used the latter technique and allowed Photomatix Pro to work it's magic on the seven RAW images you see on the left.  There was a little breeze last night causing a little movement in the leaves to camera left.  Fortunately, there is a reasonable de-ghosting feature in Photomatix to help out with this!

f16, 1/50sec ISO 100

Once in Photomatix you can play around with various sliders to get the effect you're looking for.  Very easy to get carried away with the effects.  I chose to keep the result quite natural in an attempt to recreate the scene as I remembered seeing it.  Well, apart from the lens flare in the trees to camera right!  Something I don't get with my eyes, but can sometimes add to the scene in certain photographs.  I then use the contrast, colour and sharpening options to fine tune the effect before loading the resultant image into Photoshop.

f16, 1/25sec ISO 100

Conifer Grove Sunset.  7 shot HDR image processed in Photomatix Pro.

The main reason for using Photoshop is to tidy up the edges - remember the shot was handheld, so the images won't align perfectly and you'll get some rough edges afte the images have been combined.  I'll also use a little lightening or darkening in certain areas before moving on to the next shot.  Sharpening will have a big effect on the final image, but can give a "grainy" effect if you're not careful.  Sometimes this is desirable, but not always.  The large shot below has just been cropped in Photoshop to sort out the rough edges, but otherwise it's as Photomatix would output the combined files.  I think, if you look at the colour saturation in the final image and the detail retained in the light and dark areas when compared to the seven shots above you'll agree it's an interesting technique to investigate and perhaps add to your arsenal of image processing methods for that tricky lighting situation.

Just in case the above image is a little too saturated for you, I've attached a monochrome HDR image taken on the same walk, just a little later in the day.  Any preferences?  Maybe message me and let me know.

7 shot HDR image processed in Photomatix Pro and converted to monochrome with Silver Efex.

Downtown

Old Government House, Auckland, New Zealand

I've been meaning to do this for some time now, and for some reason it's just never happened.  Well, that all changed this morning and I managed to get into Auckland City just to relax and take some photos.  I've been quite busy over the past couple of weeks and must admit to feeling more than a little frustrated with the photographs I've been taking of late.  I don't know if it's tiredness, lack of inspiration or just being bogged down with other things, but many of my photographic efforts have been pretty "ho-hum" and I felt I needed something to give myself a bit of a kick.  I can't say I was impressed with today's efforts, but I could sense a change in mood and attitude and could feel myself starting to look at things a little differently.  Perhaps another trip later this week will help a little more?

I took just two lenses.  Nikkor 12-24mm f4 and the Samyang 8mm f3.5 fisheye.  I also took a tripod - always a good idea :-)  The car was parked in Parnell and then I walked up to the University.  There's some lovely old buildings near the University, so I thought that may be a good place to start.  I've been meaning to take photographs of Auckland's old buildings for some time now, and hopefully this year may see the start of that project.  I'll keep you posted!  After a delicious coffee on campus I took refuge from the rain in the library, then headed towards the Old Government House.  I've seen this place before, but never really paid much attention to it.  More fool me!  This building is quite a treasure.  Taking your time provides opportunities to chat to people and observe your surroundings.  According to the gardeners the Queen stayed here with her family and a young Prince Charles played on the lawn you can see in the first image in this post.  It was a no go area for the locals, but that has all changed now and you can go into the building, soak up the atmosphere and get a coffee and muffin should you feel so inclined.  I must admit it brought back memories of Manchester's town hall!

Auckland's Old Government House

The grounds are quite lovely and well worth taking time out and enjoying a wander through.  If you pop over in the next month or two the roses will be in full flower and I can only image what that will look like.  Maybe I'll see you there!!

One of the issues with which I've been frustrated is getting a wide angle shot without distortion.  Part of today's exercise was to use wide angle lenses and then see if, by choice of angle when taking the shot or in post processing I could perhaps remove the distortion in the image.  Besides getting curved verticals, I was also keen to see if I could correct the effect you often see when a building looks like it's falling backwards.  I really wanted verticals to be vertical and parallel, but how much would Capture NX2 or Photoshop let me "correct"? Also, how great an effect did my selected viewpoint have on the image.

Liveview was great for these experiments as I could raise and lower my tripod and change angles of view.  Sometimes there's just nowhere to go and the building looks like it's falling over, but Photoshop does provide a pretty good range of "correction" options.  Shots three and four may give you an idea of my feeble attempts at straightening the shot.  My Camera was on a tripod and I tried to line up my verticals with the left edge of the clock tower.  The effect of this was that other verticals have become less than vertical!  Check out the leaning lamp post for example.  After a quick tweak in Photoshop my verticals look a little better.

University Clock Tower ... original

University Clock Tower ... straightened

I also made a few changes to the first two images (also taken with the Nikkor 12-24mm)  in this post in an attempt to make the verticals vertical.  The next question was how much correction could I achieve with the 8mm Samyang?  I must admit to not holding out much hope, but perhaps let me know what you think?  Shot 5 was taken with the Samyang and isn't too bad from a distortion point of view.  Things look a little odd on the building to the left of the image and I suspect this would be corrected if the camera was raised a little more.  Using the Samyang I find I get easier to correct distortion if I have the horizon smack in the middle of the image ... that is not looking up or looking down onto the subject.  In the fifth shot I'm looking up slightly, hence the greater degree of distortion.

Auckland's Old Government House, 8mm Samyang Fisheye.

I'll leave you with another shot taken with the Nikkor 12-24mm looking towards the clock tower.

Auckland University Clock Tower.