| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chester is a fabulous city, and one of most venerable in the country. Used by the Romans as a port and built upon century after century, I was able to test out my new Canon 18-200IS lens and have a play with some new photography HDR techniques.
click on any thumbnail to see the larger image
Most of these shots were taken in or around the old hypocaust belonging to a bath house. You can find it just near Chester's own version of the Colosseum which is currently being restored (and is fenced off). It's a very peaceful part of the city, and the high defensive walls block out the sound from the modern day population. It's a totally sun-trap and I can tell that office workers come here at lunchtimes in the summer to escape the rat race. The lawns are excellent but there's no signs to keep people off the grass.
I've been waiting to get my new Canon lens for a couple of months now and decided to play with a new photographic technique called 'High Dynamic Range' photography (or just 'HDR' for short). It's a way of bracketing the exposure and then combining the images in post production to lift the shadows and drop the highlights automatically.
My Canon 50D takes three shots in succession (although some other cameras shoot five), but I find that simply combining the 'under exposed' and 'over exposed' shots gives me something similar to the optimised shot without having to use it. The colours go a bit weird when I combine all three.
I'm not sure about HDR photography yet as I find the contrast of the merged image is a little severe for my liking, but that could be because I'm using a Canon lens rather than my more traditional Sigma lenses. The contrast patterns are completely different, so it may become something I only use on wide angle shots with my 10-22mm Sigma.
However, I do really like my new Canon 18-200IS and the images it produces are excellent. It's my new 'walking around' lens and means I can really cut down on the kit I carry ... which I know my neck will thank me for.
So I wonder if you can tell which of these shots are HDR and which ones are normal?
Answers on a postcard to ...
Until next time ...
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
