Samples From The Past Week

Really just more of the same, but I'm aiming to get away from the usual soon. There is some new gear here, though. More about that later.

These are all five file HDR composites.

Odds and Ends

Here's a varied bunch of odds and ends from the past week.

First, you can make HDR composites that aren't over the top and look pretty natural. But which bring the dynamic range in a scene which your eyes see but which your camera doesn't capture in a single frame. This is a three file HDR with the 7D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens.

I spent a few minutes photographing a backyard pond and garden with a 7D and 70-200mm f/2.8L lens with an extender 2xIII attached. Here a couple of shots. I haven't identified the wasp as of yet.

Both shots are at 400mm, f/8 and 400 ISO.

Finally, after some heavy rain the night before, muddy water from the Hudson River and the Barge Canal overflow was mixing with the clear water of the Mohawk River in the area of Waterford Harbor. This is a three image HDR composite made with the 7D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens.

There is, unfortunately, no way to avoid the power lines in shots made from this particular bridge.

Over the Top HDR Composites

Sometimes it's fun to HDR images that don't look anything like reality. Scenics with water and clouds are one of my favorite subjects for this treatment. This morning, while out with my EOS 70D and EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens, the conditions were just right for that sort of fun.

These are all 5 image hand held scenes processed with the "Painterly"presets in Photomatix Essentials version 4.0.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

I mentioned in my last post that I recently picked up a 24-70mm f/2.8L lens. This lens was replaced in Canon's lineup by the version II in 2012. The copy I obtained was made in February, 2011 and is in extremely good condition. I sold by previous copy a little over a year ago. This is a much newer and nicer copy for the same price I received for the older one.

24-70mm translates to a 38-112mm field view on my crop sensor bodies. Not ideal for landscapes but useful for event coverage, street or documentary photography. One problem is this lens cries out for a full frame body upon which to attach itself. I could see a used 5D Mark III in the future, or even a 5D Mark II now that I'm used to Magic Lantern and it's enhanced bracketing options. A 5D Mark II would really bring things back around to where I was in the middle of 2013 before I started making changes.

Here are two shots from the past few days showing the field of view range of the lens on my 7D followed by an HDR scenic and a cropped in shot of a Swallowtail Butterfly on Purple Loosestrife.

24mm

70mm

3 image HDR, 24mm, f/6.7, 1/750 sec., ISO 200, +/- 1 1/2 EV

70mm, f/6.7, 1/750 sec., ISO 200, cropped less than 50%