Nikon DSLR "Picture Of The Day"

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Awesome VR, how the hell do you shoot lightning?
Do you wait till you see it and click or shoot a million long exposure jpegs of the sky and hope to capture a strike?

Also Delobbo that first shot of the river beatifull PP. Tori, I'm surprised you only spent an hour there beautiful capture and lovelly scene. Rooz love the birds.

Geez this thread moves along fast.

[truflip]

Leave the shutter open.

[Rasidel Slika]

VR, I guess you are ignoring me for whatever reason and that's fine - now, I'm not here to argue but I must clarify what I'm talking about. Here is one of the definitive HDR guides out there, which is referenced by flickr in its "What is HDR" section, along with countless other sites:

http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/#whatishdr

Step 1: Source images

There are two main ways to create the source images needed for HDR. You can either use AEB, auto exposure bracketing, on your camera to take 3 images while you are out, or you can use RAW to take 1 image and then use a RAW editor to produce 3 shots back at your computer. I shall start with auto exposure bracketing.

The bolded section is what I am referring to - creating multiple exposures from 1 RAW, which is what Photomatix does:

Generating a HDRI from a single RAW file

Using the latest version of Photomatix, 2.3.1, you can load a single RAW file and generate a HDR image. Simply goto File -> Open and then select the RAW file. Photomatix will load the image and generate a HDR from it. You will still need to tone map the image after.

This is HDR. Here is an example of a HDR image from a single RAW file:
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs30/f/20...by_delobbo.jpg

I don't expect any answer from you, I just want to make sure you know what I'm talking about.

ps. I am definitely not a fan of what has (sadly) become the "HDR look". I did not mean to insinuate that I was, when I mentioned it.

sorry for the threadjack, that's all I'll say in here regarding this.

Now back to our regular story

[Visual Reality]

I'm not ignoring you, and I do know what you are talking about. I am aware of tonemapping single captures. I'm not trying to put them down either - I am simply stating that the term HDR has been incorrectly applied to many photographs. Tonemapping isn't necessarily HDR - it is a light smoothing process.

High Dynamic Range, by definition is the goal of capturing more DR than the camera can normally handle. This is done through multiple exposures - you expose the shadows, the highlights, and in-between. These are merged to create a image more true to life, closer to how we remembered it. That is the goal of HDR.

Now tonemapping a single capture, or splitting a single image 3 times to merge them back together cannot create data that wasn't there to begin with. The DR had to be captured optically at the time of the shot. In summary, HDR is capturing more range (the difference between dark and light) than a camera can capture in a single image and this cannot be "created" on a computer. The term HDR has been incorrectly applied to many images and grossly overused.

I hope it makes sense now.

I'm glad you guys liked the lightning. It was actually one of my first shots of the night and I had many more after that. I just took a couple dozen 10 second captures until I got something decent. Some day I will have some that aren't taken through a window.

[Rooz]

from bugs to birds...

[anco85]

WOW, that is stunning rooz.

Flash blast camera left?

[Rooz]

no strobes on that one actually. spot metered off the owl against a very dark b/g. so it basically totally eliminated everything bar the bird. there were some tiny green blobs around which i cloned out.

here's one of many peregrine falcon shots.

[anco85]

I see, either way, very VERY nice Rooz.

You'll have to teach me someday

[Rooz]

get a 300/4 and you wont need lessons. trust me. (yes it does AF on a d40 )
lol

[XaiLo]

delobbo & Visual Reality, How would either or both of you classify this image?