#hdr image processing

Boston Beacon Hill

While walking around Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood, we stopped on a street that we thought was representative of the area. A long, narrow, hilly street, with cars lining both sides and shoulder to shoulder buildings.

The problem was that a single image was not going to do justice to what our eyes were able to interpret. The wide dynamic range .. from the bright, late afternoon sky to the dark cars and shadows from the buildings.

I stood in the middle of the street, pre-focused on a specific spot, and made note of where my center focal point was visually in the scene since this was handheld. Then, I rotated the exposure compensation dial until the setting was +1 stop without changing the aperture. I realigned the center focus spot to the same area and took the shot. I readjusted the exposure compensation dial to -1 stop, repositioned the camera and took a third shot. (the -1 and +1 images are shown above).