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.

Sony RX100 Special Effects

I decided that it was about time to discover what all the extra items on the Sony's menu do. It has a large range of Styles and Effects. Most of these are too extreme to be of much value as, unlike in photomanipulation software, you cannot turn down the settings to give a hint of the effect. However, as with the monochrome settings, which shouldn't be used in preference to a good monochrome conversion software on the computer, they can be useful in visualising the potential of a scene and what might work well at a later stage. For instance, the top footpath image is very messy as a straight photo but the Illustration Effect simplifies the elements. The High setting on the HDR Painting mode is very impressive but definitely a bit over the top. The other images are examples of the Illustration and Watercolour (church) effects where it worked well  to accentuate the chosen elements in the images.

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.