As you’ll know if you’ve been following my recent haikyo explorations, I’m getting interested in the technique of HDR for photography; essentially the process of splicing together several photographs of the same thing (using software that does it all for you) so both light and dark parts of the shot come out even. Here’s one such HDR from my balcony, shot with my Tamron 17-50mm, at 17mm.
You may also have gathered that I sold my zoom lens (not useful for haikyo) and invested in an ultra-wide zoom, a Tokina 11-16mm. I haven’t used it for haikyo yet, but decided to take a replica Waseda HDR shot to get an idea of the difference in zoom power.
Those extra 6mm pack in a lot of extra width. I think it’ll really help when it comes to trying to show the interiors of haikyo to best effect. Also it’s great for landscapes and capturing a great big swathe of sky.
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A bit of a HDR stacking blur on the second one. I usually cheat and get Photomatix to generate a fake HDR from a single RAW file, bypassing the problem of camera/people moving between bracketing shots. This technique won’t help in extreme situations (with blow-outs and such), but will do well enough for most shots.
I love shooting wide too, but for me going below 16 gets a bit distorted. But for your purposes, I agree ultra-wide is the way to go. Gives a very good feel, especially when you are shooting indoors.
What’s that in the bottom right of the picture? Graveyard?
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Icie- You may be right- but actually when I zoomed in on the original, it’s sharp. This is something I’ve noticed in wide-angle shots: it packs in so much detail that the detail starts to look blurred, even when it isn’t. Your point on distortion probably plays into that too.
Daniel- Right on, graveyard. We are often awoken in the morning by funeral ceremony drums and chanting.
HDR is pretty adictive, I often forget to take my camera off bracketing mode. Nice view by the way-
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Brian- I’m shooting only in brackets now. Leaves the HDR option open, and also a safety net if one exposure doesn’t turn out so good. Maybe ought to move to RAW?