Digital Diversity

I previously wrote an article on basic exposure blending. This was a basic guide on how to create multiple exposures using either exposure bracketing or a single RAW file and then blending them together. This tutorial is a more advanced version of this technique where you take one RAW shot that is exposed correctly for the land and then sky is recovered afterwards and saved as a second file. These 2 files can then be blended together using masks. To finish off, this tutorial will show you how to use photo filters to alter the light in your image.

For this tutorial it will help if you already now the following:
• Layers and Masks
• Photo Filters

This shot was taken from the top of the Scottish history museum. Its just a throw away shot really, not sharp and not that interesting but will be a good example to show off this technique.

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One problem you can encounter in photography is lack of dynamic range. The dynamic range is the range of light levels that can be seen from black to white. You will often find that while a photo has well exposed shadows and mid-tones, the light parts of the image are far to light or even blown out (pure white). On the other hand you may have exposed for the highlights in which case the shadows will look overly dark and underexposed. The problem this leaves is that what you see with your eye is certainly not what you get using your camera. The solution here is to take multiple exposures and blend them together to increase the dynamic range of the shot. You can use as many shots as you like but for the purposes of this tutorial it will be done using 3 shots.

There are 2 ways to get the multiple exposures. The first is exposure bracketing. This is when you set your camera up to take multiple shots of the same scene at different exposures. How you would do this depends on your camera. Many DSLRs and also advanced point and shoots have an option for this to be done automatically. You just hold the button down and the camera will take 3 shots, each time adjusting the exposure. You can normally set how much to do this by. If you set it to +/- 1 then it will take 3 shots, one at the original exposure, one a 1 stop above this and one at 1 stop below.

If your camera does not have this option then you will need to use a manual or semi manual mode to do this. For example you can use aperture priority, take the shot then use the exposure compensation to create the other 2 shots needed.
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Canons 70-200 range are fairly well known for their high quality and being some of the best zoom lenses you can buy from Canons range. There are (at the time of writing) 5 versions of this lens available. 2 versions at F4 and 3 versions at f2.8:
Canon 70-200 F4
Canon 70-200 F4 IS
Canon 70-200 F2.8
Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS
Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS mkII

After using the canon 55-250 IS for some time I found it a great set of focal lengths for shooting nature and wildlife that I can get relatively close to. For this reason I have had my eye on getting one of the 70-200′s as a replacement. The problem with these lenses is price. They aren’t cheap. The most reasonably priced one by far is the Canon 70-200 f4 without IS (image stabilization). To get the version with IS costs almost double the price and that is something I cant afford to do at this point in my life. So this clearly led me to purchase the non IS version.

Canon 70-200 F4 L, size - 76x172mm, weight - 705g

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