Thursday 16 April 2009

Nice sky, shame about the telescopes


Well, here's another attempt at creating an HDR image, and all I can say is that the sky looks absolutely stunning. Shame about the JCMT and CSO looking a little fuzzy, but they won't mind.

This is going to be more of an obsession than with Hugin. I'm not sure I really wanted to do that google search for free HDR software...

Still, I'm impressed with the images that can be taken with a $200 camera and some free software, but am learning, slowly, that a tripod is perhaps the most essential piece of equipment for taking decent landscape pictures.

4 comments:

Keera Ann Fox said...

And a very nice sky, it is! $200 is a cheap hobby. :-)

Anonymous said...

Tom,

tripod - yes! Also, don't be worried about overexposing. With this image you would really need to do this to get a good exposure in the shadows of the valley. I've found that its better to overexpose than it is to underexpose, as the latter can only add noise to your image.

Also, FYI - you can get a really good education discount with Photomatix Pro. 60% !! All you need is a .edu email address.

Beep said...

So beautiful...

not that I really understand what "HDR" is :)

Tom said...

Ant - I just got photomatix using the discount. Even read the manual and watched the videos! I think I'm underexposing everything which ties in with your comment.

One thing that disappoints me with photomatix so far is the alignment process, Hugin does so much better (I've compared the two with the same sets of images). Maybe I'm missing something.