HDR – ‘Henry’ gets the makeover

It has been a while since I have done a HDR of any description. One of my own favourites is this one

So, when the chance arose from visiting the same area (Queenscliff, VIC) I wandered down to the coastal railway, and lucky for me, with the Easter holidays upon us, it looked like they’d ‘dressed’ up one of the engines to look like Henry (from the Thomas the Tank series on TV)

I did two takes on this, both were 3 shots (shot in RAW), 1 stop apart, hand held (well, sort of, I was resting on a wire fence)

Shot with a Canon 40D, with a Sigma 10-20 attached (and polariser)

Processed and Tonemapped in Photomatix, finished off in Photoshop.

© Henry – #1

You can find a larger version here

This is a closer shot of ‘Henry’ I quite like the “cartoony”  look and probably works better with the subject chosen.

© Henry – #2

You can find a larger version here

HDR – ReDynaMix

Tried out a different program for producing HDR shots. ReDynaMix is its name and if interested it can be found here

I used a single file JPG, only because I haven’t checked to see if it does RAW files. Has real time viewing window as you adjust the sliders. I got an “out of memory” a couple of times ( I had Firefox, Capture One and Photoshop running at the time) I thought 4GB would enough memory, maybe my ‘puter was having an off day.

Anyway, just thought I’d post up a result, it’s a busy photo, but I’m happy with the outcome.

© Old Pump at “Wandi”

HDR – Tone Mapped, twice!

Here’s a technique that was shared with me, and one that I never even thought of, and that was to tone map the HDR, twice!

While not earth shattering, it does throw up some interesting effects in the end result is a little “grungy” but rather than overall, it seems to occur in smaller pockets of areas. These could be taken further with a little burning and dodging.

The general idea is to process in Photomatix and after being tone mapped, save as a 16BIT TIF, reopen in Photomatix and tone map again.

Here’s a small segment of a photo I used this technique on, a larger photo can be found either here or here

© Safe Harbour

I think the technique may be of use when are there are pockets of shadows, for example, dappled light under a tree. Hope someone finds this useful.