jakdedert wrote:


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.

That's the "usual" as trying to get many more without you (or the scene)
moving gets problematical.

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.

Photoshop has provisions to not only work in areas - but to handle
shadow, midtone and highlight areas separately; lightening / darkening /
increasing and decreasing saturation - and you can select to apply
either to the entire image or specific areas. Add that to the ability to
handle layers each with such capability - and you can do some pretty
neat stuff. Fortunately - Minolta (and the successor Sony) has a
multizone exposure system that usually does a pretty good job of
"getting the details". Of course like all such "stuff" you can tell it
to mind it's own business and either use simple or totally manual
controls as you wish. Sometimes in very low light - it's better to shut
the autofocus off and do it by hand - so you get the exact subject in
focus - rather than the camera guessing at what is supposed to be in
focus. In good light - it's not a problem - as the lens is (usually)
stopped down enough to get everything "good enough" - but when the lens
is wide open - it's time to give the automatics "the boot".

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

Yeah - that's something I have to watch - sometimes when "tweaking" - I
can get a bit overboard - and need to quit "pushing" things before they
become "unreal"...

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.

You could - but sometimes it's better to do a transformation of the
original by the values (usually of some specific area) of the brackets
(or tweaked copies). Photoshop let's you have best of both worlds - as
you can apply a layers as a transitional mask (add, subtract - or even
multiply or divide depending on effect desired). Then if you screw it up
- you delete the layer - and the original is untouched.


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

Fortunately - since much of my work requires Photoshop and several of
it's siblings - I "get" to use Created Suite which has all the "toys". I
use mostly Photoshop and GoLive (web work) though I find myself using
Illustrator more and more lately as I work in more technical "stuff".
I also have the "non-suite" package Adobe Audition - which used to be
"Cool Edit" for working with audio like Photoshop does graphics.

best regards...
--
randy guttery

A Tender Tale - a page dedicated to those Ships and Crews
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