David's Images of the Day Photoblog
Male Broad-tailed Hummingbird at Lily Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Image taken with a Nikon D300 camera and 70-200 mm f/2.8 VR lens + TC-E II 20 teleconverter (ISO 200, 400 mm, f/8, 1/160 sec). Raw image processed with Capture One Pro, Focus Magic, and Photoshop CS5.
For the Afternoon, we spent time at Redwood Gulch Falls. The light levels within the forest near the falls ranged from very bright to very dark — well beyond the capability of DSLR sensors. Here I used Singh-Ray filters (to smooth out the water flow) and HDR (took 5 images under and over exposed) which were then combined using Photomatix. Later on we traveled to Sand Dollar beach. Our first exercise was to use filters at the beach to give the waves a soft ethereal effect. As the sun set over the Pacific ocean, I used HDR again to adapt to the wide range of light.
Macro focus stacking study using Helicon Focus. This is a composite of 30 stacked image where the focus was adjusted near to far using Helicon Remote and then combined using Helicon Focus. The images were acquired using a Nikon D3x camera and 5o mm f/1.4G lens (ISO 100, f/1.4, 1.3 sec) and ambient light. The distance between nearest and farthest focus point was ~5 inches, and the camera was ~24 inches from the nearest focus point. The Helicon Focus settings used to process the images were mode B, radius 8, smoothing 4. Other settings increased the halo.
