This guy crushes Pod!

[V. Barbarino]

here

[Bling]

gorgeous

[JMT]

i really don't think we want to see that much resolution in the club pics.

[pod]

It's not resolution, it's dynamic range.

Essentially what this guy is doing is setting his gear on a rock-solid tripod, and taking multiple exposures of a scene in a sequence. A few underexposed, by say 3 stops, 2 stops, 1 stop. Then 1 right on the money. Then a few over exposed by 1 stop, 2 stops, 3 stops respectively.

Basically, what he or she is doing, is capturing the entire scene's 'dynamic range', from the deep shadows to the bursting highlights. Normally, if you take an image, you're metering for say, a person, or a tree. The tree might look fine, but the sky behind it might be blown out, and you only see white. It's a limitation of film and digital cameras. They don't "see" as much as the human eye does.

Then, after you're done capturing all this, Photoshop has a handy function called "Merge HDR" which allows you to merge all those photos you just took, so the shadows, mids, and highlights all come out properly exposed in one image. Now, we're not used to seeing images like this, so it's rather surreal. In essence, it's an automation of the old burning and dodging tricks in the darkroom.

HDR for social pics would be very difficult.

[LeVeL]

Pod has definetely gotten better over the years, I remember when I first got into Cooljunkie years ago Bashing him due to the blurry shots he was taking, I remember telling pod that I could take better pics with my digital camera then he could...lol

[V. Barbarino]

Originally Posted by pod

It's called HDR, it's not too difficult to do.

alright, then do it! There is plenty of parks here in Miami you could use.. Man up, or let bling take over your mod job.

[pod]

Thing is, I don't want to do it. I have no burning desire to do landscape shooting at the moment.

[Kamikaze]

the above photo is nice, with a large amount of Photoshop work put into it, the guy most likely did a huge amount of Sharpening on the entire photo to get the detail to pop, and like POD said then used HDR.

One of the few landscape photos I like that I havr taken is this below. It is a good photo and pretty much straight from the camera with very little photos hop done to it.

I might be able to go and redo this shop soon and apply the same skills as sharpening and HDR if I get a time.

[pod]

Nighttime shots generally don't require HDR since the dynamic range is smaller of the overall scene. There's no blazing highlights in large areas, like with a sky.

Not to demean the guy, but most of those photos in his portfolio are highly processed. The hardware to get that 'out of the camera' doesn't exist at a consumer level at the moment.

[V. Barbarino]

Originally Posted by pod

Thing is, I don't want to do it. I have no burning desire to do landscape shooting at the moment.

turn your cj mod badge in and give it to bling...