American Falls, originally uploaded by jezza323.
This is the American Falls at Niagara Falls, viewed from the Canadian side of the border. I took this one quite late in the evening, on an after dinner walk. I was so stuffed full of food I had to walk some of it off.
This is a 3 shot HDR, taken at +/- 2.0 EV with the Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.
I blended the shots with Photomatix and made some final adjusts in Lightroom.
I managed to beat the rain out and about in Toronto this morning. Its been a while since I been out just to take photos. Its good to be back on the horse!
This is a Brenizer panorama I took of some newspaper and magazine stands near St Patrick Subway Station in downtown Toronto. This one was 93 separate shots, all taken with my Pentax K200D and Tair-11a 135mm f2.8 lens. I set the camera to Manual, dialed in the correct exposure and then started shooting.
I imported the RAW files into Lightroom from the SD card. Next I exported the images as TIFF files to a separate folder (to make the stitching process quicker, I exported the TIFFs to only 1280×1280 max size), which I then ran Autopano over to generate the final panorama. Finally I imported the panorama back into Lightroom, made a final crop, distortion and level adjustment. The image is still slightly distorted, but this comes from the projection of the panorama, and I wasnt quite able to get it spot on.
If you like this shot, check out my Tair-11a lens review and my post about the Brenizer Method / Bokeh Panorama technique.
This is a shot back from my Fog chasing morning in Brisbane. I only just realised I hadn’t posted it up here!
This was my favourite photo of the day, I hope you enjoy it too.
This was taken with my Pentax K200D body, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens. I took the shot with the exposure bias set to +2.0 EV, then took 3 exposures at +/- 2.0 EV, which meant I ended up with 0, +2 and +4 EV shots based on the camera’s inbuilt metering.
The reason for increasing the bias for this shot was because the shot was taken towards the sun, meaning the camera’s metering system would severely underexpose the foreground of the image, in an attempt to prevent the sun from blowing out too much. By altering the bias, I was able to get the detail in the foreground that I required.
I then used the LR/Enfuse plugin to Lightroom to blend the 3 exposures into the image you see here, along with a few final tweaks to the levels and cropping.
Great Library Memorial, originally uploaded by jezza323.
This is another shot of Osgoode Hall. This one is a Memorial in the Great Library of the building.
This is a bit of an unusual shot for me, because it is a black and white HDR. Not something I usually would do, but I have been craving some black and white, so here some is!
Again this is 3 shots taken at +/- 2.0 EV, with the Pentax K200D and Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6. I blended the exposures using Photomatix (in colour) then made the final edits and black & white conversion in Lightroom.
University Avenue Memorial, originally uploaded by jezza323.
This war memorial can be found at University Avenue and Queen Street West in Toronto. It is a memorial to all those who fought for Canada in the Boer War. The memorial was commissioned in 1910 and was designed by Walter Seymour Allward.
This is a HDR composed of 3 exposures, taken at +/- 2.0 EV using my Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens. I blended them using Photomatix, then made some adjustments to the final image in Lightroom.
Absent Photographer, originally uploaded by jezza323.
Here is another quick capture from Saturday evening down at Niagara Falls. There are some really beautiful gardens in the parks by the Falls. This building with its garden and the tripod setup caught my attention for a nice image.
This is another HDR combined from 3 exposures taken at +/- 2.0 EV using Photomatix, and some minor tweaks in Lightroom. I took this using my Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.
I am having some trouble with this lens at the moment, it is back focusing quite a lot, you can only notice it when using wider apertures and longer focal lengths, but I will need to do a bit of testing to see if it is just this lens, or my body. One or both may need some repair.
Sir Isaac Brock Memorial, originally uploaded by jezza323.
This is a memorial at Niagara for Sir Isaac Brock, killed fighting in the war of 1812 between the British (Canada) and America.
We visited here over the Victoria Day long weekend for lunch at the adjacent restaurant whilst on a Niagara region wine tour. The wines were great! Definitely try some icewine if you haven’t already.
The scenery and buildings in the area were also amazing to see. We will definitely be returning to the area soon to visit all those areas we missed this time around.
This shot is a HDR composed of 3 exposures taken at +/- 2.0 EV with the Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens. The HDR was composed using Photomatix and minor adjustments made using Lightroom 3. I took this just after finishing lunch, after a small rainstorm passed through, leaving lovely wet paths which add to the effect.
I am now an official Toronto resident, have moade the move here with my wife. We are settling in, and have found the time to visit a number of the tourist attractions. This is the first I will post.
Casa Loma is a gothic style home, build in the early 1900′s by a wealthy Toronto businessman. It is now a tourist attraction and museum.
I grabbed this shot as we were leaving. It is quite hard to get a good angle on the building due to the trees everywhere, but I managed to find this spot at the edge of the carpark.
This image is 3 shots, taken at +/- 2.0 EV and blended using Lightroom and the LREnfuse plugin.
Early Morning Fog, originally uploaded by jezza323.
This is another foggy morning shot, not as much colour in this, but at least a bit of an object of interest to draw the eye.
This one was also taken with the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens on a tripod. It is 3 shots taken at +/- 2.0 EV and blended using the LR/Enfuse plugin, which is a great plugin, highly recommend you try it out. You can try it for free, but only create 500px blends, and you can get yourself a key to unlock the plugin by donating to the project.
I am a little behind, but I hope to catch up this week. We have had rainy weather non stop for a couple weeks now. Yesterday I got out amongst the showers in the Mt Cootha Botanic Gardens, and in particular wanted to visit the Japanese Garden. You can read about the garden here.
Over the last week or so I’ve been discussing shooting in various different aspect ratios with a friend at work. He had the idea to shoot only in a particular aspect ratio for a bit. After this discussion I decided to copy his idea a little, and try shooting some stuff in the movie aspect ratio of 2.39:1 (my friend has decided on 16:9 btw). This is from my first shoot where I specifically considered shooting in this aspect. I dont plan on taking lots of shots in this aspect ratio, but it is fun to consider.
This is a Brenizer Panorama, taken with my Pentax K200D and Jupiter-9 85mm lens at f2.8. I stitched the shots using Autopano, then did some editing in Lightroom 2.5 to get the final result (crop, contrast, exposure, blacks)
