Ace With Base

[kbobam]

I like these marbles so much, that the idea of someone melting them to make stands feels a little like sacrilege.

On the other hand, the end result is pretty nice. Just don't know....

This is the first HDR (high dynamic range) marble photo I've taken.

As you can sort of see from the 'watermark', it was done with Photomatix software, which is a mind-blowing program.

I'll definitely be losing the watermarks and purchasing the program in the near future.

Any camera-heads who aren't familiar with HDR photography should definitely check out the Photomatix site.

Seriously. It'll rock your world.

[m!b$]

I'm definitely going to have to check that out. Did you take multiple exposures of that photo, and the Photomatix software fused them together? I read on their website about that.

http://www.hdrsoft.com/

[Steph]

Wow, you captured so much color.

[kbobam]

Thanks for posting the link.

Yes, this shot combines a normal exposure with an under and an over exposed one.

If you right-click/properties on the photo you can see that the program saved it as

P9127098_099_101_fused.png, which shows the name of the first frame used, and

the last three digits of subsequent ones. This can be handy, so I don't change the filenames.

I was very happy to have the color come out as it did. A shot like this isn't normally the sort

of situation where HDR techniques are called for, but as we all know, some marbles just

don't seem to photograph well no matter what you do. Was hoping that Photomatix might

help out, and so far results are encouraging. Here's a comparison to a normal exposure.

[m!b$]

I always take all my shots with spot metering, and the exposure set so the highlight areas are slghtly underexposed, then painstakingly edit them in a graphics program so the shadow and midtone areas are correct, and adjust the white balance, if necessary. Lightening up a photo often changes the colors so they are not correct anymore, then that has to be adjusted too. It would be nice to have a program that does some of that for me.

[kbobam]

From what I've seen so far, there are definitely some situations where the combining of multiple exposures can really make your life easier.

I took a wide angle test shot of the full expanse of my humble apartment the other day. The lighting ranged from nonexistent to bright lightbulb

total bleach-out. End result came out came out so well-balanced that it looked like experienced architectural photography people had spent an

entire day setting up lights, reflectors, etc. It was impressive. Personally, I'm no good with the photo editing programs, so this is great for me,

and for someone like you who's good with them it could certainly save some time, and possibly make a better image by starting off with something

that requires less post-processing.

Hoping to take and post some shots of other 'difficult' marbles soon.

I'm still in a Jabo state of mind, and thinking about certain Last Dance and March Madness marbles which really require perfect lighting conditions

to be fully appreciated. With a little luck the multiple exposure technique will give a result that's closer to what our brains see in hand than a

standard photo would be. ( :