The moon at dawn

[reefrunner]

Well, I was getting ready to leave this morning (right around dawn) and I noticed that the moon was still up in the sky and the sun was just beginning to break the horizon. The moon was just past being full and I thought it looked pretty cool and I thought, well hell you were gonna be a few minutes early anyway, so I dashed inside and got the cam and the tripod but there was no way I could shoot the pic and have someone see what I saw. I tried to take several exposures exposing for both highlights and shadows, but the moon moves pretty fast and none of them matched up. Luckily I was shooting in RAW and what I ended up doing was taking the one that was closest to the middle and changing the exposure and shadows for highlights and converting it, then doing the same thing exposing it for shadows. I then used the instructions on this page http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-blending.shtml and combining the two exposures. I thought it came out decent for the first time I had ever done this. I think this is most useful if you shoot in RAW or recognize the probability of a shot beyond the dynamic range of the cam and remember to bracket. I found even shooting from a tripod and using a cable release, the act of changing the dial for exposure moved the camera very slightly, but slight changes are magnified over distance. There is also the issue of wind through the tree branches. It is much simpler to use the same image, simply exposed differently.

Anyway, here is my first attempt at a digital blending.


Image exposed for shadows

Image exposed for highlights

Image that has been digitally blended

 

[Maxx]

Very Cool Kevin! I need to learn how to do all of this w/ a digital. All of my experiance is film based. I could spend a couple of hours in the darkroom and get similar results, but I bet it didnt even take you that long. And all my efforts would be for a single print, each successive print would be different from the original.
Man I need a Canon 10d!
Nick

 

[wooddood]

very very nice kevin great job.




dave.

 

[reefrunner]

Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool. It was pretty simple following the directions on the page linked above, I used the second method, although if it is something I end up doing regularly, I'll probably spend the money on the Fred Miranda Action and see what kind of results it gives.

 

[drdrew]

great job...funny, i was out at 3:00 a.m. the other night trying to do the same thing...my results sucked. i do need to learn that trick though. thanks for the link. i didn't know FM had an action for it?

 

[reefrunner]

Yeah, there is a link to the Fred Miranda Action on the luminous-landscape page linked above.

 

[reefrunner]

Here is another I did using the same source files and used a different action developed by a guy called herper (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=8698417) on the dpreview forum, the action is free and I think it did a fine job, let me know which blend is better, I think it brought out ALOT more shadow detail and didn't over expose the highlights.

So which one is better?

 

[drdrew]

i think the last one definitely has more detail in the shadow,

but overall, i like the deeper saturations and more "moodiness"
of your first blend better.

 

[sarah]

Great picys, i think the second one is better, more detail in it.

Sarah xxx

 

[dgasmd]

Very nice picture.