Composite Image - Fairy

Here is my composite image. I decided to do a fairy kind of thing so I could take a macro shot and then place the subject in it, just to make it a bit more interesting. So I went out to Majura pines and they had these wonderful red toadstools! I swear if fairies exist they would live there! So I decided to have my subject sitting on a stump, as this stump seemed like the perfect stool for a fairy!
I decided to use butterfly wings instead of buying some fairy wings as I think it looks more 'realistic', and I didn't want it to look tacky, especially as my model isn't a child (fake fairy wings obviously look much better on children).

Panorama

Here is my finished panorama. It was taken at the top of Burnt stump hill, out the back of Gungahlin. Not too happy with it really, as the sky is incredibly boring. It did stitch nicely however.

HDR project

Here is the results of my HDR. I went to Molonglo reach to take this, and I could tell just by looking at the scene it would benefit from a combined exposure. And as you can see in the before image, the sky is really over-exposed and the foreground is under-exposed. So I think making it a HDR made it much more appealing.

Before

After

Calibration #3

Unfortunately I was ill for this calibration and was not present. But Chi did a very good job after help from Geoff to change the colour balance. So hopefully the next calibration will be as accurate as this one!

Presentation - HDR

Step 1: Taking the shots.
There are two ways in which to take the different exposures needed to produce a HDR image. You can either take one RAW image and then save different exposures using Adobe Camera RAW. But in order to create a true HDR image it is best to take different exposures separately as either Jpeg or RAW files. For this it is best to use a tripod to avoid any movement in the scene. The one problem with taking separate images is that you can not have any moving objects in your scene.

Step 2: Process the shots.
After saving the files on your computer edit the RAW files as you would normally (sharpness, saturation etc.)

Step 3: Creating the HDR image.
In my presentation I used the program Photomatix, as I feel it is the best program to create HDRs as the tone mapping controls are very easy to use and it is easy to personalize the kind of look you want.

In the photomatix program, select the files you want and then it will create the HDR image in 32bit format. It may take a while to load. After it has finished, you can use the tone mapping options to take it back to a normal viewing range. Adjusting the settings is mainly done by trial and error; just playing around until you achieve the look you want.

Once you are happy with the result, you can save it and you are done!

Before:

After:

Calibration #2

This is the screenshot from our second calibration. The luminance is pretty close, but the colour is slightly off.
This calibration was rather annoying as we had to do it twice, and I don't think we got it as accurate the second time as the first time.

Calibration #1

Ok so this is the first calibration that we did. It was actually a lot more confusing than I had previously anticipated. But I think we got it right in the end. It didn't seem to make much of a difference, except the colour seemed to change a lot. It seemed to get much bluer when we did the colour changing, and the image shows that the green was a bit off, but I wish we got more information from the picture.