HDR photography has been a popular thing for a few years now. The premise is simple; take multiple pictures of a scene at various exposure offsets and merge them together. This gives a final image that has more dynamic range than any one photo could take, which means you can see more detail in darker and brighter areas. Most HDR sucks. A couple reasons for this. One reason is what I call "super HDR." These are images that have such a large dynamic range to them that it shows more than the human eye could see. Occasionally, this wouldn't be bad, but I see people that do this for every single picture they do. Another reason is just the process of doing HDR. Without getting too technical, you merge the images and create what's called a tone-mapped image. You then need to tweak settings on this intermediate photo to get a suitable output. This can create things like halos around bright spots in the image. It can also mess with the colors and saturation of the image. In my opinion, a HDR image should mimic what someone viewing that scene in real life would see.

There is another method of merging several images together called--among other things--exposure fusion. In this method the images are compared and whichever image has the "best" pixel, as determined by several factors, is included in the final image. Some smoothing of the final image and it's done. This is a more direct approach as no intermediate file needs to be made. It's also much easier to do. The above image had all default settings. I like this over HDR because it produces a more realistic image. You may even been thinking that's just a single picture. Well, here's the first of the three images used for the above file.

My camera, a canon 40D, takes three pictures. The first one is at the proper exposure, which in this case had 0 exposure bias. It then takes (again, this can be changed) an image with -2 exposure bias and +2 exposure bias. With the image above being the first of the three, that means it's a single properly exposed picture. Some things should be immediate when compared to the top image. There's hardly any detail in the window and the windows on the right were blown out slightly. In the upper left corner there was hardly any detail. Even the reflection in the water has more detail in the enfused image.

I created the image with a program called enfuse. There are clients with GUIs for mac, windows, and linux. You can download it and get more information from here.

A quick note that I'm trying out a different theme for my photo gallery. Still considering playing with the color scheme. If you remember the old theme let me know if you like this one better or if you don't remember the old one how does this one look? Thanks. Again the link is http://photos.vrillusions.com.

I was down in Fairlawn for a doctor appointment. Pretty much every time I'm down here I go to through the fjord (is it called something different?) that crosses the road in the middle of the park. This time I remembered to bring my camera and tripod. So I trekked through snow towards a small hill to setup. Had a couple ideas I wanted to do and this was one of them. It's two cars going through right after the other. If you look you can see the splash from the first car is illuminated by the headlights of the second car.

I need to invest in some insulated boots or something. I stood for close to an hour in the snow waiting for it to get dark but not too dark. Also I'll have to buy some waders at some point as I wanted to take a pictures of the small waterfall coming off the ledge opposite of the camera. Also while I like the ball head on my Dolica Tripod, I was using a cheaper tripod I got at best buy that has the standard head that lets you pan. I had to change positions between getting cars going each direction. Once I get a higher end tripod I'll need to get both a ball head and a regular one as they both server their own purpose.

For those wondering what type a camera lens could take such sharp pictures, most were taken with my trusty Canon 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens (aka the thrifty fifty). Highly recommended lens. There is a better quality 50mm lens but it's also a lot more expensive

Rest of the pictures I took can be found in the photo gallery.

It was Sunday afternoon and didn't have any pictures yet. Visited my parents like I do most Sundays and figured I'd go through the park. Was amazed a tree still had a lot of it's leaves so I trudged through ankle deep snow to get this. Tried a couple looking straight up the tree and they just didn't come out how I wanted. Kinda bland but maybe it would make a good texture if I did that kind of thing. For those somewhat familiar with north-eastern Ohio, Streetsboro is located south of Twinsburg and north of Kent.

Winter is still in full force but the sun decided to finally come out. Been meaning to go to the Westinghouse factory for a while now. Apparently I wasn't alone in this since while I was there I ran into a group of three other photographers. Also ran into a group that was just walking around, including a young boy maybe 10 or so. Kind of a dangerous place to be taking a child to but he seemed to be enjoying it. I was there by myself (yes, I'm that crazy) so I had plenty of time to try out some new techniques. I spent a good half hour trying to capture the water dripping from the roof firing a flash from the side and various other tricks and didn't get anything usable. Did have fun with a broken elevator (like I said, I'm crazy). Since it was completely dark I hooked up my flash to a remote trigger and set it in the corner of the elevator and got a couple interesting shots. Ultimately I had composition issues since neither image looked straight. I may revisit them later. Those pictures and everything else I took are visible in the gallery.

This week I went to tower city. Years ago I would go here with my parents maybe every other week it seemed. There was a Warner Brothers store and a Disney store. For the life of me I couldn't say what we bought all the time but we always bought something and then we could get the ticket validated so parking was free. Well the only thing left is the ticket validation if you purchase something. Warner Brothers and Disney are long gone. The water fountains weren't on but I figured it may have something to do with valentine's day and the mass wedding they were doing the following day. Also did a quick walk around public square you can see in the gallery here

While I was at Ohayocon last week I bought me a couple animation cels. I've been collecting them for a while and both of the cels I got matched two series I like and already have a few cels. Out of interest I decided instead of using a scanner for the cels (and because I still don't have it setup) I decided to try setting up a document camera. The premise is simple; suspend the camera directly above document and take a picture. It takes a little more work though. For example you can see below what a natural light shot would look like.

Reflections galore. Plus the light in this is a chandelier with incandescent lights on a dimmer. Even at full bright they're still warmer than a standard incandescent lightbulb. That's why even with the white balance set to incandescent it's still a little warmer than it should be. I could have tweaked it some but I'm just using this for an example.

Here is the final setup.

If you click on the picture and go to the flickr page you can see the notes I made about what everything is. In short I have my Dolica tripod's center column inverted and tilted so I can aim the camera straight down. I could have skipped extending the one leg but I would have hit the chandelier. I then have two YN-460 flashes, one at each corner, at 1/32 power. (note: there are better models than this one, I'd go with one that has a rotary dial). They're triggered by some ebay wireless triggers. They have an optical slave but I didn't want any flash to come from the camera. I then switched the camera to manual, set iso to 100 to reduce noise, set shutter speed to 1/250s to remove any trace of ambient light, and adjusted aperture till I got the exposure right.

I'm not 100% happy with these pictures. The light isn't as uniform as I'd like. I probably should have flipped down the wide angle screens that are on the flashes to help distribute the light better. Also since the cel isn't completely flat you see some shadows on the side. The benefit of a setup like this is if you were someone that constantly took pictures of sketches, paintings, cels, etc. Once everything is setup you can take one picture after another. Setting everything up to only take a couple pictures isn't worth it and I'll eventually get my scanner setup to put these with the rest of my cel pictures.

I went to Ohayocon over the weekend which means I had plenty of pictures for this week so it was hard to make a choice. The above picture was from my first 1 on 1 photo shoot I've ever done. I've been taking pictures of people for years but it's typically one or two pictures and then I move on. I wasn't used to having a single subject for an extended amount of time but was probably one of the most educational things I've ever done. Some general observations from the photo shoot:

• I'm very comfortable with the equipment. I knew this going in but it just kinda affirmed that I know all the details about my camera and even the new demb flip-it I just received a couple days before the convention. I quite literally never thought about how to set the camera settings; I just set them.
• First photo shoot at an anime convention was an excellent idea. Another thing I realized before hand but not how much of a benefit it was. I was extremely nervous at first but we're both at an anime convention, so obviously we have something in common to talk about while walking around to locations. Which has also instilled some nervousness for if/when I do a photo shoot outside of a convention setting. Although that could just be solved at the pre-meeting while determining the goal of the photo shoot and such.
• I really need a faster lens. Faster lens is a term used to describe camera lens that have a larger aperture which means they let in more light which allows me to take better natural light photos indoors. Due to the higher iso I used there's some noise at 100% zoom. I've been having my eye on the Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L lens for quite a while now but not sure when I'll be able to afford it.
• I rushed things. I expected it to be around a half hour and ended up being like 15 minutes, a lot of that walking around scouting locations. A lot of the negative observations really came to this.
• I didn't "see" the images. For example the first area we did some photos was against a white wall. White wall plus white parasol don't go well together. This was immediately obvious when reviewing the pictures later but at the moment I just didn't think about it. At the above location first picture she didn't have the parasol behind her so it was dark brown hair against black which didn't look right. Could have solved that a couple ways but the parasol behind her just worked. Another thing that didn't jump out at me but I still found quickly was just the placement of things. For example there are a couple where the hair wasn't straight. Basically simple stuff I should have caught but didn't.
• I completely didn't think about proper posing and such. Fortunately she was very natural behind the camera and was kinda in auto-pilot so I didn't have to do much direction aside from initial pose. I knew most of the "rules" I just completely didn't think about it during the shoot.

Not really photo shoot specific but just a general observation; convention centers are horrible for color correction. I set the white balance to florescent and gelled the flash with a green filter to color correct the flash to florescent as well. Problem is I typically set the power level of the flash low so there's just a little fill light. The end result was the flash gave a greenish cast to people. I dumped the gel after the first day but it took a while to get the images from the first day usable. Also taking at least 2 pictures of each group worked out really well. Lets me choose when one may have someone walking in the background or something else that detracts from the subject. By far I spent the most time post processing this images than I ever had before. On one image the color balance was really off took quite a while to get good enough. Moments after posting it on the forums though I saw a comment complimenting me about the picture, that made it worth it to me.

I set out with a goal of having over 100 pictures and handing out all 100 of the business cards I had made. In reality I had around 30 images and handed out maybe 15 cards. A lot of the times I saw someone I wanted to take a picture but I didn't want to hold back foot traffic for it. I did do the first of what I hope to be many more photo shoots and still had a good weekend. Not sure of the next convention I'm going to. Possibly anime punch but can't say for certain.

Rest of pictures can be found in photo gallery

It's winter so it was another dreary week for taking pictures. Originally went out to take pictures at nearby Edgewater Park when I figured I'd see if I can get to the coast guard station. Much to my surprise it's open to the public right up to the building. Took a lot more work to get inside and it was pretty run down. Had a nice view from the top although I'm sure it would have been better if it wasn't winter.

This coming weekend I'm going to Ohayocon and I plan on taking a ton of pictures and even try a couple photo sessions for the first time so I'll have something other than grey outdoor shots next week.

Rest of pictures can be found in photo gallery.

I got a half day off from work and with lake erie being frozen over I'd try and get some pictures of the frozen lake. Ran into a couple issues. First I turned up the exposure compensation to +1 to make the snow white. While it looked ok on the histogram when I went over them on the computer a lot of them were too bright. Had to manually tone down a lot of them. Another thing I completely forgot about was the highlight tone priority option my camera has. It's pretty much designed for situations just like this to bring out the detail in white areas. So if I could do it again I'd enable that highlight tone priority and not go overboard on the exposure compensation.

Rest of pictures can be found in photo gallery