More photos from around the house

Playing with the software, realized that there is an alignment feature to align each picture to a reference to capture the light variation without increasing the blur.

In spite of using a tripod and taking the individual images in self timer mode, the few seconds it takes to change the exposure setting and clicking the shutter somehow moves the center of the image by a few pixels and that is enough to change the quality of the picture.

Found this trying to image a cabbage rose in our front yard.

Went back and zoomed in on a single rose in the flower vase and it came out crystal clear with fantastic detail even inside the shadows within the petals.

Original plan to go to take a picture of the golden gate didn't come through. Will have to try that another day..

For now, I am like a kid in a candy store.. so many possibilities with the same camera...

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A bouquet of roses - HDR Photography

Yesterday, our friends got us a bouquet of roses for the pooja. They are really beautiful roses and have a rich variety of colors.

The photo crazy idiot that I am, started taking pictures of the flowers. The colds were captured but somehow the depth of the roses were not coming out on the JPG's.

Then thought of using the HDR software and shot a series of pictures with the tripod and set it to a 2.4 second exposure with a range of aperture settings from

4.0,4.5, 6.0, 6.3, 7.1, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, 11.0, 13.0, 18.0, 20.0

and then using the software superimposed select pictures to get a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image from this subset.

Sure enough, the image takes on more depth and gets the bright and dark ares of the roses to have the same amount of detail..

Here are two such composites.

One with almost all of the aligned images..

and one with a smaller subset..

Two realizations at the end of the photo editing process.

1. HDR is the closest I have seen a photograph capture what we see with our eyes.

2. Our eyes are way ahead! Way way way way ahead than any camera or software. God is the most brilliant camera maker! He provides us fantastic subjects like roses and fantastic images to our brain, courtesy of some amazing cameras, our eyes.

The fun continues tonight. Planning to go to my all time favorite, most photographed architectural subject in the bay area tonight..

No marks for guessing what that is!

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HDR attempt 1 - stone egg on granite

A rock that my friend Maria gave me a long time ago for my 25th Birthday.. has always been lying around in my shoebox... realized that it had the same color as our granite countertop!

This is a composite of 6 shots with f4.0 to f9.0

there will be more subjects and more pictures by sunday.

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HDR photography

Have been playing with a free HDR software called FDR Tools Basic. Still trying to get the hang of it.

The basic idea is to get bright and dark parts of an image to work at the same time while creating a three dimensional effect on the photograph by superimposing multiple shots with different exposure compensations into one picture.

Some good examples

a. from AP
b. from google images
c. still forms

The free software is not that easy to play with.. will post some images this friday.

tinkering.. tinkering.. still tinkering...

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ISS - visible to us this week

The international space station moved past us in plain sight again tonight.. a few minutes ago. From 9:29 to 9:33 PM

It was beautiful to watch. At one point, I stopped trying to capture it on camera with a bulb setting and just watched it and enjoyed it.

(my Photography skills are really bad when it comes to capturing moving objects in a dark sky with cars occasionally flashing their headlights)

Put it in bulb setting and used the highest f number (25) and let it go for like 30 seconds and this is what I got after trying to fool with the contrast settings...

There is one more chance tomorrow..

Going to try to open the thing up using f5.6 or f7.0 and do the same thing..

but also planning to capture it on my camcorder because I don't know how the self timer mode works on the bulb setting. You have to hold the shutter open and when you release the finger, the picture is done.. unless you have an external way to open the shutter don't know how to do this. Maybe set it up with the software and use the laptop to remotely open the shutter? (that way the shake during the shutter click can be avoided... all this is assuming someone out there gives me a tip on the right exposure setting to do this)

On the plus side the iPhone is amazing. You hold the compass up and watch the clock and just like magic the ISS appears and disappears.. What a gadget!

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