I tried a few shots recently in the early morning fog using a new 8mm fish-eye lens:
This first image shows the garden in the fog. The sun is to the upper right about 1/3rd of the way in where the sky goes right. This view is a standard exposure with a little exposure adjustments to try and get the best settings possible. It looks, to a certain extent as it was, very dull and grey.
This next view is based on a 3 exposure HDR shot using the same image (plus 2 other exposures) as the shot above although in this version it has been cropped along the bottom:
This looks a lot less dull. A little of the blue sky is showing, the tall tree stands out more, as does a lot of the scene in the distance. Overall it seems less foggy with more contrast and more colour. This was just a simple HDR blend using the default options.
A second view is shown next:
Again, there is more contrast and you can see further into the fog. Colours seem more natural and there is a hint of blue in the sky. I wont show the original but like the first photo shown above it was very dull and lifeless.
For this final shot I walked over to some farmland to view some trees:
This, again, was taken with the fish-eye lens but this time in portrait mode; this was to give more height for the trees but it also gave more mud from the field which has been cropped out. You can see a little curvature to the trees which is caused by the fish-eye lens.
As with the garden photos, there is more contrast in the scene with a deeper view into the fog. The colours aren’t so flat and lifeless and there is a hint of blue in the scene.
Next time I shall try extending the exposure range of the HDR image set to see what difference that makes and adjust the HDR processing (or to be more correct, the tone mapping) to see if these can be improved upon. I think I may need to wait until the autumn for some decent fog though!
Postscript:
Just to experiment, I converted one of the images above to a sepia-like tone and submitted it to my camera club competition. It didn’t, not surprisingly, do very well!
