Isle of Wight

Using Bracketed RAWs

Freshwater Bay :: Isle of Wight



One of my favourite haunts is the Isle of Wight. It has such a lot of to offer and so many photo opportunities, that I normally come back with hunderds of photo from a trip that lasts just a couple of days.

This photo, taken a few years ago now, is taken from the cliff tops just outsite Freshwater Bay. Although the sun is on the other part of the island to this location, it offers a great view.

I setup on the cliff top and waited for the sun to start setting. Then I took a few bracketed images to create some full HDR images.

This is a merged HDR from 3 handheld RAW exposures.

How did I do it :: Before and After

Camera: Canon 40D
Lens: 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS (Shot at 17 mm)
ISO: 250 at f/5.6
3 RAW images
Where was I: Shot on the cliff tops at Freshwater, the Isle of Wight, 2009.
Hardware I used: iMac
Software I used: Photomatix v5,

What I did:
Standing on the cliff top, with arms firmly pressed into my chest for support, I took 3 bracketed exposures of -2 0 +2. Then, nearly 5 years later, for this page, I dropped them into Photomatix 5 and processed them using tonmapping to create the final image above.
The before image in the before and after, is the 0 adjustment image, which is generally what you would get taking 1 photo.

You can see the benefits of using 3 bracketed images here, as the result is quite stunning compared to the original.

before
after
before
after