More HDR Trials

 A few more goes with the trial HDR software - mostly as notes for future comparisons etc. The top two pairs show the 'correctly' exposed images (no compensation) adjusted as best I can in Lightroom and on the right the 3-image 2-stop compensation set combined. With fairly low tonal range images the differences are not that marked but with images with high tonal range such as inside the nail-makers workshop, the HDR Darkroom comes into its own.

Black Country Museum

I visited the Black Country Living Museum today and spent the day taking multiple exposure bracketed images to convert with HDR software. My laptop does not have the Nik HDR software on it so tried with Photoshop. As the results were not great, downloaded a trial of HDR Darkroom which gave very good conversions and is easy to use. See the two comparison images. Unfortunately the trial version watermarks the images.

Cambridge contrast

 Amazing blue sky all day so Cambridge was looking at its best with spring flowers and new leaves. All taken with RX100 (welcome to the club Barry) which performs particularly well under these bright conditions as with most compacts. The top two make use of the high contrast. I then set the camera to 6-stop HDR - these are handheld and again in bright conditions there is enough shutterspeed to cope (left is the middle exposure that the camera saves along with the HDR image). Very impressive performance. Not so good where there is a figure moving as there is ghosting.

Mill at Anglesey Abbey

 I took some images yesterday in the Water Mill at Anglesey Abbey using the HDR setting on my Sony. It worked surprisingly well. The monochrome image shows how shadows can be lost by choosing the right channel mix in the Raw converter.

Contrast in Cambridge

I am still testing out my new RX100 compact to see the best everyday settings as mainly I will be using it as a 'grab' camera where there is no time to think about modes etc. In each of the pairs above, the lefthand image uses the built-in HDR, which takes several images and combines them in camera. This obviously only works as a jpg. The other image is a RAW image adjusted as fully as possible in the Raw converter. The greater saturation of the HDR image works well where the light is very contrasty as in the first pair but not so well when bringing out shadow areas as in the second pair.

The two images below also use the HDR mode - both into the light and work well.