Late Winter Sunset

Even though the clouds were somewhat sparse yesterday, I walked down to my usual sunset location at the confluence of the Hudson and (two branches of the) Mohawk Rivers. My usual bracketing sequence for sunsets, especially where the sun is still visible, is -1, 0, +1, +2 and +3 EV.

Both of the following images were made at f/6.7 and 100 ISO. Shutter speeds for the first image are from 1/500 to 1/30 second. Shutter speeds for the second image are from 1/350 to 1/20 second. Both were made with the wide end of my 24-105mm f/4L lens. Image stabilization on the lens enabled both the slower shutter speeds and the hand held bracketing.

My usual practice is to process the RAW files from the camera in Photomatix Pro software without any prior processing of the files. Here are the results of that processing using the software's Painterly preset.

Noting the darkened corners, I decided to take the extra steps to first process each of the RAW files in Canon's DPP software to correct for peripheral illumination, among other things. I then saved the files in TIF format and then processed them in Photomatix Pro.

With peripheral illumination corrected, I was able to process the files a little more aggressively in the HDR software. I ended up preferring the results using the Painterly 5 preset. Here are the final results.