Black Creek Greenway Stitched HDR

Black Creek Greenway
Black Creek Greenway, Cary, North Carolina | Canon 5D Mark III and 24mm f/3.5L TS-E | Multiple exposures at f/11, ISO 200

Recently I began working more with landscape photography and, in turn, my old habit of making multiple photographs of a scene and stitching them together.  Related to that, I recently began to explore what would happen if I made multiple versions of the multiple pictures to be stitched together: that is, what if you bracket for High Dynamic Range photography with each “view” in a panorama or other stitched image.  The results can be pretty amazing, but so is the amount of work that can be required to pull it off!  I’ll be writing more on this topic after Thanksgiving!

Forest Glow

Forest Glow
Forest Glow, Cary, North Carolina | Canon 5D Mark III and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens @ 48mm | Seven bracketed exposures converted with Nik HDR Efex

While I was experimenting with a 5D Mark III camera body on loan from CPS, I discovered that one of its killer apps is for high dynamic range photography.  No, not its built-in HDR functionality (which is rather underwhelming).  Rather, I am referring to its ability to set autoexposure bracketing for up to seven frames and, when the shutter button is depressed, automatically go into mirror lock-up and rapidly fire each frame in sequence.  The one wrinkle?  If you already have mirror lock-up enabled, this while actually cause a hiccup: it will want you to hit the shutter for each frame.  Canon, please fix this quirk in your next firmware release!

This is much more useful than previous incarnations of autoexposure bracketing: three images really is not enough for HDR photography.  Seven?  I can work with seven!

 

All Hallow’s Eve

Halloween 2012
Halloween 2012, Cary, NC | Canon 5D Mark III and 50mm f/1.2L lens | Exposed 1/40 sec. @ f/7.1, ISO 5000

Can you tell that a couple of the members of the household are a wee bit obsessed with birds?  Remarks on the 5D Mark III on loan from Canon Professional Services, as well as the recently announced Focus Tune from Michael Tapes Designs, intended to introduce a bit of automation to setting Autofocus Micro Adjustments with LensAlign to follow in the coming weeks.