HDR Photography

I am just exporting a tutorial for HDR Photography.

If you are interested in doing this with the SX40, you will need to have the CHDK installed on your memory card in order to use RAW files. You can see how to do this Here, remember that this method requires a memory card that is 4GB or less in size.

Here is today's example of the HDR image I made for the tutorial:

AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing)

I know I mentioned this yesterday but I just want to run through Auto Exposure Bracketing pre-HDR (High Dynamic Range Photography).

When we move onto HDR things get quite complicated with the SX40 so I want to just run through the reasons for exposure bracketing first.

The idea of exposure bracketing is that you can guarantee that you get the right exposure for your image, especially if you don't have the time to keep reviewing back through your photos.

Exposure is essentially how bright your images are coming out. Over exposed images are often too bright and too much light is affecting the image. Vice Versa, under exposed images are too dark and not enough detail can be seen.

Imagine you are at an event, you have your images set up perfectly so you start snapping away. However, as the light changes and as you move indoors and outdoors, that lighting is going to change, and if you don't keep an eye on your settings, some of your pictures are going to come out too dark or too light because you haven't been paying attention to the light changing around you.

However at events, we don't have time to sit there reviewing every picture we take. The same with taking pictures of family gatherings or pets or when we are going around on a tour of a building, there's not always time to check our pictures came out OK. With bracketing, we can tell the camera to automatically take three pictures every time we take a shot. This means that, if our original settings come out badly, we have one picture that is brighter and one picture that is darker, and if we did have a moment where our original settings weren't right, likeliness is that one of the other pictures came out OK instead.

Obviously, you will need to take into consideration that you will now have 3x the amount of pictures to look through and also 3x less space on our memory card so really this isn't ideal to use every day, all the time. But it certainly helps when we are photographing something important.


So just to show you, these three pictures were taken with bracketing this morning...



Original:

Under Exposed:

Over Exposed:

So you can imagine, had the sun gone in, and I was still using these settings, the over exposed image would have come out bright enough and the original may have been a little bit too dark. The under exposed would have been way too dark but at least by have bracketing switched on, the over exposed image would have redeemed the bad settings on the original.

Frensham Ponds and Time Lapse!

Hi All,

I took a trip to a place called Frensham Ponds which is in Farnham in Surrey. It's a really nice place to go and take photos as they have sail boats and little beaches and a few little walking paths to stroll along. So originally I was going to take some photos with bracketing as this is my next YouTube tutorial. However, as I sat there in the sun which  haven't seen in a long while (not properly anyway), I decided to leave the camera running on a video with my 16GB card and did a time lapse by speeding up the footage in Window Movie Maker.

The results can be seen here:

Vid1

And here:

Vid2


I hope to do another one of these at a sunset if I can. The great thing is that you can just leave it running, no other efforts needed :) I had to cut the first video together as the vid cut out at around 17 mins. The video as a whole is around 35 mins long, compressed into about 34 seconds. It's cool to watch the clouds moving I think :)

So of course I also went to take some photos and got some pretty funky results! I accidentally stumbled across a couple more Bokeh rules/ideas for those who are interested:

1 - If you take something with Macro focus this often gives you a Bokeh effect so you don't always have to be far back if you are right up against your subject.

2 - Think about some kind of foreground Bokeh instead. You still need a big gap between you and your subject, but this time make sure there is something a lot closer to you than your subject. This will majorly blur in the foreground as the camera can't focus on it because it will be too close and it will look like a foreground Bokeh.


As an example, here are some foreground Bokeh style pics I took today:

And here's the Macro focus version of Bokeh:

So off of the subject of Bokeh before I bore everyone, here's some other pics I took on my jolly old walk through Frensham :)

Understanding Shutter Speed...

So here's the next downloadable help-sheet. I hope it helps and don't be afraid to send your opinions this way whether they be good or bad ;)

There is a link to the file on my Deviant art Here

Advancing Bokeh.

So I had a better breakthrough with Bokeh. It's still not perfect but is certainly better than I previously had.

Here are some rules to making bokeh:

1 - Use a low Aperture, as low as the camera will let you.

2 - In relation to number one, set your camera to aperture value as that will be the priority for the camera when choosing the other settings.

3 - Make sure the distance between you and your subject is a big one.

4 - Make sure the distance between your subject and the background is also very large.

5 - Make sure your zoom is as far as it can realistically go... the more zoom, the better the background blur.

6 - Make sure your subject is well lit.

7 - Make sure your background is also well lit and try to avoid backgrounds that have too many large objects as the smaller the objects, the easier they blur!


So with this in mind, I took the following pictures. However, I never was one to remember my own advice! The outside shot of the rabbit in night time wasn't well lit but I will show it as a demo anyway. I also managed to take all of my outdoor pics with my ISO on 3200 which was way too high, I just hadn't turned it back down. On top of this, I also forgot to change my White Balance from Tungsten to Daylight so the pictures are quite pale and blue. Apologies for that but hopefully you will get the idea anyway.

Not everyone will love that I call these pics Bokeh because the circular shapes aren't defined enough but this is the best I could get so hopefully it will help a lot of people when setting up a shot anyway!

Bird World

I went to Bird World in Farnham today to see what pics I could get on the SX40. I quite possibly risked loosing a few toes it was so cold! I actually ended up putting a spare pair of gloves on my feet to try and keep my toes warmer inside my shoes... it didn't work however at least I was able to spend some time taking pictures outside of the house and it was a really nice trip.

I just wanted to post some pictures that I took at Bird World in case anyone would like to see them. I won't put all of them so that people don't have to sit through too much but I'll post the ones I was happiest with. I have posted the pictures to an album on the Facebook page if anyone wants to see them.

It's been a busy week this week and the weekends just go so fast I don't get a chance to see them! I will work on some videos tomorrow however I do have a possible Animation project which will take me away from YouTube until the end of February if it goes forward.

Anyway, here are the pics!



Reptiles in the Underwater World section:

Eagle peering out from one of the big cages:

Parrot Feathers:

Petting Zoo:

HDR (High Dynamic Range) images and Bracketing

I haven't made a video on this yet but I have recently been perusing the wonderful world of HDR, that is High Dynamic Range photography and bracketing.

In short, HDR images are made up from three or more images taken at different exposures.

Have you ever wanted to take a picture of a perfect scene, but you find your foreground or background just don't come out how they seem to your eye? For example, a sunset where the foreground is perfect but the sky is washed out. Or a field of bright flowers and blue sky, the sky is vibrant but the flowers loose their charm?

The camera can only give you exposure for your image to a certain degree, it cannot give you the perfect exposure for both your foreground and your background. The exposure it uses will affect the whole image, so what suits the exposure for one element of your image may not be the best exposure for another element.

HDR is designed to let you edit all those different exposures together so that you have a final picture that includes all of these appealing aspects that you want to keep.

When you switch on bracketing, the camera gives you a range of different looks that you can play with in post production. It takes 3 or more images (depending on how many you tell it to do) at different exposures. This gives you each element of the image at different exposures. I will use some pictures I took on a Canon 60D this morning as an example.

Always shoot in RAW if you can as RAW allows you to manipulate an image much more without degrading the quality too much. ( I shot with RAW and Large JPEG switched on so that I could upload examples quickly)

So this is the HDR image I created from the bracketed images:

And here is the image with standard exposure:

So as you can see, it's very pale and whilst it looks nice and crisp, it leaves the sky quite washed out and I'm sure you can imagine this wasn't exactly what the eye could see otherwise the world would look pretty pale to us.

So the tree with the snow came out about right, but I had to sacrifice the blue of the sky and the suns highlights on the tree in order to capture the snow covered branches.

So I set the camera to do bracketing and it took one exposure that was too dark (-3) and one exposure that was too bright (+3). By taking these pictures, I am now in control of a range of exposures that will give me access to more colours and shadows as well as more highlights depending on the look I'd like to go for.

Here are the two bracketed images:

Underexposed (-3)

Overexposed (+3)

So whilst, in ordinary situations I wouldn't ever want the picture to be so dark or so light, by underexposing one image, I have obtained the blue of the sky and by overexposing the other, the highlights are much more pronounced (perhaps a little too bright).

So now that we have these images, we can use software to merge these together and pick out the aspects we like the most.

So lets just quickly look at the bracketed images together.

The other great thing about making HDR images, is that the software does a lot of the work for us. We just sit there while it processes the image.

As I said, I will make a video on how to create HDR images as I am new to this but it seems fairly easy to pick up.

If you want to create HDR images yourself here's some things to think about:

1 - Use a tripod, you will be taking 3 pictures (or more) in a row so you don't want the camera positioning to change.

2 - Pick a location where there's a nice range of colour, brightness and shadow so that you have more to work with.

3 - Have a look at your camera and its bracketing options. You can also do bracketing with focus but I will cover that at another time.


Whilst I advise using a tripod - I actually didn't because I really dislike using tripods just by personal preference. I made sure that I had a fast shutter speed and a low aperture and that I stayed VERY still during the picture taking. I also had it on multi shot so that I didn't have to press the shutter button more than once.


Anyway, here is the HDR image one more time and I will put another one that I did just in practice.

Happy snapping everyone :)

Watermarking

I have just made a video on watermarking images in Photoshop.

This is my version of watermarking so not everyone will do it the same way. But I like to be able to choose where my watermark goes and how much it shows up in the image so I do my images individually whereas many people do there's in an automated batch.

Watermarking is great for getting your name associated with your images, as well as protecting them for those naughty people who think it's OK to claim them as their own! (Unfortunately it can happen!)

I watermark with an image because I like the look, most people just use text or a stylized text but everyone is different an it all depends on how you want your watermark to look.

The important thing is that your watermark, whilst being present in a way that deters people from using them without permission, your mark should also avoid distracting from the image as a whole because in the end, we share our images for people to appreciate. If your watermark is too heavy, it's like trying to appreciate an image that has been taken with a big smudge on the lens. You can't see it properly and therefore won't bother to look fully so keep your watermark light to avoid ruining your image.

Those are my thoughts on watermarking anyway. I hope it is of help to some people and I apologise if you don't have Photoshop and cannot replicate this technique!

Ciao for now!

Sharing what little Bokeh I did get...

So with regards to the Bokeh post I made earlier, I thought I may as well share what I managed to do with Bokeh lights, even if I couldn't get the foreground and background working together.

I also had a play in Photoshop using a Bokeh style background with just another pic I took on the SX40... at least I can convince myself that I made Bokeh, even if it's not true haha!

This is the Photoshopped one :)

Bokeh

Hi All,

I have decided to admit defeat with regards to Bokeh. I find that the Sx40 is too limited in terms of its focus and manual control and therefore I think it's best I move on with other videos for now. I have tried for many hours as well as using CHDK and just can't get enough manual control to force a Bokeh effect.

If anyone else knows how to do it on the Sx40, I'm all ears and if I figure it out/get some advice I will share it as soon as I know :)

Sorry folks.

Customizing your start-up image and video updates

I'm just uploading a video about putting your own image on the camera start up screen. As I mention in the video, I'm sorry that I haven't made much but in all honesty I have been really busy and when I get home I'm just very very tired!

So I only made a quick video as it was a question asked and was quick to answer so I thought I may as well share the answer with everyone else :)

I am currently working on Bokeh. I do intend to do more videos on CHDK but I am trying to alternate between other videos and CHDK vids as I don't want to completely abandon those who haven't used CHDK or who don't want to use it. I also need more time with it myself otherwise the things I will be saying about CHDK won't be very well practised in practical situations!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new video when it processes. Its a nice personal touch to a camera everyone loves :)

Filter Kit

So I saw this on Amazon. It seems like a pretty good deal but I haven't tried it so I'm not guaranteeing anything but check it out. Wish I had seen this earlier!


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kiwifotos-6-Piece-Lens-Canon-PowerShot/dp/B0051GSTUQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1328097883&sr=8-4