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Kasper-V

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I went to see Bolsover Castle a few weeks ago, a 17th century stately home in Derbyshire, England (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/bolsover-castle/). The day was dull and dreary,  and the interior photos I took turned out to be tricky: the glare from the windows was pretty bad, and some of the rooms were quite dark. Ideally, I'd have had a tripod, but they tend to frown on that kind of thing in most old houses -- they don't want us ham-fisted photographers poking holes in their parquet or ripping up their rush matting. So ...  a couple of hand-held shots with crossed fingers, then check the image and the histogram ...

 DSCF7357.jpg.a6042fdc4b4f22a5f433e039579f3c2a.jpg

 

This is a straight Raw to JPG conversion of one of the shots: there's a bit of detail outside, and all else is in deep shadow.

 

Fortunately, there was still enough info to get a reasonable result. I opened the two images in AP with 'New Panorama', and when the blending was complete, I duplicated the layer and opened the Develop persona. Here I upped the exposure by two stops and clicked 'Develop'. I repeated this with a new layer, then one last time, increasing by just one stop, as it became too washed out after that. I saved each layer as a 16-bit TIFF, closed the file, and brought my TIFFs into 'New HDR Merge'. After a little adjustment, I got a fair result (part-cropped):

7357-8HDRpan.jpg.4b7a4172c112404a2f3be9f86a6a7a53.jpg

 

This is a much better result than I got from developing a single layer. (But maybe next time I'll sneak my tripod in!)

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5 hours ago, Kasper-V said:

This is a much better result than I got from developing a single layer. (But maybe next time I'll sneak my tripod in!)

Or maybe you could take some bracketed shots. I do this with church windows. Does your camera have an auto-bracketing? You need +/- 2 stops. If not and you have to do it by hand, use the camera's 'spirit level' each time and focus on the same spot. Affinity's HDR algorithm and the alignment are pretty good.

Having said that, your final image here is pretty impressive.

 

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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20 hours ago, Kasper-V said:

It only does +/- 1 stop, but I suppose that's better than nothing. I have used 2 stops, manually, on occasion, but it's fiddly when shooting hand-held, of course.
Thanks for the compliment!

Yes, it is fiddly. My camera only offers +/- one stop, but I do find that the on-screen 'spirit level' (or whatever it is called) is invaluable in these circumstnces.

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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22 hours ago, John Rostron said:

the on-screen 'spirit level'

Ah -- do you mean the histogram? Yes, I rely on it a lot. On the other hand, an actual on-screen spirit level would be very handy. If only I could afford a new camera ...

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The 'spirit level' is the screen's Electronic Level Display. It allows me to position the camera so that it is horizontal.

See this scan from David Busch's Compact Field Guide to the Sony A55.

 

ElrctroLevel01.jpg

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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