William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Randy or Sherry Guttery" wrote in message
.. .

Indeed - plus bracketing - which used to be only for those shots
where there truly were (usually) very poor or unusual conditions -
now it's no big thing to bracket a half dozen and an equal number
of composures of the same subject.

Composures?

Given the appropriate software, bracketed shots can be combined to produce a
picture that shows detail in both the highlights and shadows, over a
ludicrously wide brightness range.


Even my admittedly poor camera has a mode where it will shoot bracketed
exposures, three of them for each shutter press, at a selected bracket
of +/- .5, 1.0 or 1.5....automatically. I've seen some instruction on
how to combine the shots in layers to bring out detail in shadowed
areas, without washing out the same in brighter areas.

The effect is almost surreal...like a video game scene.

My thought, although I haven't yet tried it yet, is that much could be
done by saving the same exposure several times with various settings of
gamma and/or brightness, then layering back the copies to the original.

The only software I have to do that is Corel Photopaint, although I just
downloaded a copy of GIMP...freeware, but highly recommended.

jak

jak