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I took this image on Saturday night from the inner lighthouse at Port Stephens looking east towards Tomaree headland.

This was one of the most difficult exposures I have ever taken. It's a tripod mounted shot (doh!) and is a merge of two 30 second exposures with different exposure compensation values (one at 0, the other at +2 EV). Shot at F16 with the 24-120 VR lens. When I get my main PC back and have CS2 I'll have a go at a high dynamic range version, but for now I'm happy with this, blown highlights and all! Click for a larger version. Any tips on improving this would be greatly appreciated.

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Very nice Peter... Apart from what appears to be a slight tilt, it looks great... I'll be interested to see what emerges from the HDR version as it would've been good to have a little more detail in those highlights...

P.S. I think you meant Duh! rather than Doh! - you know how important it is not to get those two words mixed up

I will wait for the hdr version.

the whites are sooooo much different than the rest of the image at the moment

seems to have promise though

Steve

Beautiful! nice reflections and the clouds and deep blue are amazing! i wonder what it would look like with a ND filter? do you think the blown out mood would be saved but preserve the detail of the clouds?

Great imagery Peter. Try a high contrast B&W when you've finished with your other PP. Ansell Adams might have enjoyed that view too

I have moved my book from the left side to the right side of my monitor, just a small book....... great image.......

stubbsy wrote:... a merge of two 30 second exposures with different exposure compensation values (one at 0, the other at +2 EV). Shot at F16 with the 24-120 VR lens....

I'll also be interested to see if you can bring much more out with the larger dynamic range, although I suspect the dark areas such as the headland will look a bit noisy and may be best left as a silhouette. I like the colour of the water and sky due to the bright moonlight, and softness of the water surface and some of the clouds caused by a bit of movement over the duration of the exposures. Did you use NR? What ISO?

Surely if you took 2 exposures at 30 sec and f/16 they would have been manual exposures and the exposure compensation is meaningless? EC only changes the value the light meter shows and wont change the actual exposure when you manually set it.... or do you mean you adjusted the ISO by 2 stops for one exposure?

Gordon

Great shot Peter,

It would have been a pretty special spot with the moonrise. Looking forward to the next version.

cheers,

André

Thanks for all the comments people. Will be a few weeks before I get the HDR done, but in the meanitme I may have a go at a B & W for you Steve

Now here's a question for any HDR gurus - will this work if the whites of this are still a little bright in the "darker" of the 2 imges I have or would I be better to clone the reflextion and moon in from some other images which have slightly different zoom on them?

Peter
Despite all of the trouble you took to put this image together...it doesn't work for me. It's the composition....the dark foreground holds the eye for a second and then the eye shoots along the reflection up to a featureless hot-moon. The moon shoots back into my eye and I'm done. If I look again then exactly the same thing happens again. The image is remarkable in that it's composition is almost designed to make the viewer look elsewhere. There...I hope I wasn't too harsh?

The image doesn't quite work for me in its current state either. And I think it is the contrast between the underexposed elements of the picture and the blown highlights.

But I am prepared to wait for the final version before writing it off.

Also, I do not think the picture is tilted. When the camera is not square to a horizon that recedes it does give the impression of a tilted viewfinder - I think that is what we see here.

The conditions were quite tricky with this shot, I was not very happy with my pics.