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Wasn’t it just yesterday that the leaves were green?

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These pics were taken with my Nifty Fifty 50mm Canon lens – the first one I used my keyboard as the metering (which was dark) and the second one I just used a random spot on the screen.

The difference is remarkable – this is a perfect example of spot metering. In the first pic, I chose the dark part of my keyboard to compensate for the bright screen and you can see how clear the pic is. These pics are from the Google homepage on my laptop. In the second, I just used part of the car and shot. You can see the dark pixel pattern over it – which always makes it so difficult to take a pic of your pc screen.

Metering on a darker area helped to bring out the colors of the pic and avoid that pixel pattern from my screen. So this is not only a good example of how to use spot metering – but also an example of how to take an awesome pic from your laptop screen.

Give it a try – choose various points to metering on – have some fun! If you aren’t sure what spot metering is – take a look at this post.

Comment here and upload your pics so I can see them!

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The above pics were shot using AEB – automatic exposure bracketing. What that means is I enabled AEB and used to to shoot a shot -2 in exposure – another one with normal exposure – then the third one with +2 exposure. Doing this allows you to put your shooting mode on continuous and it will adjust itself and take the shots using the AEB setting. Remember – for best results you should shoot in manual!

So once I got my 3 photos with 3 different exposures – I used a Merge to HDR automatate option on Photoshop cs4. Before you merge them you can apply or adjust each shot if desired, but you can also adjust the gamma and exposure. You can also use Local Adaption to make some adjustments.

These photos have no noise added to them, and really it’s not a very good shot or anything – but I wanted to mess around with it and see what the outcome would be if I made the adjustments manually. Below are 2 versions of the merged hdr images – you can see by the difference that I messed with once differently. Let’s take a look:

I went for a more spooky look since it’s Halloween!

Play around with your AEB settings and post up here so I can see your wonderful images!

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Let’s face it, Instagram is fun! I find myself taking an Instagram pic about every day since I got my iPad.

Here are some cute ones:

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Holga is a Chinese toy camera – it’s made completely of plastic and uses medium format 120 film. It’s cheaply made and really just a play thing. Oh, but the pictures you can capture! The thing about the Holga is that is has light leaks, blur, vignetting and awesome distortions. It actually has quite a cult following and you can find Holga groups all over Flickr and many blogs and websites dedicated to it.

What makes it so cool? The light leaks, blur, etc etc because your pictures take an other-worldly spin and turn out fantastic! Here are some Holga pics for you to enjoy –> The Holga Group on Flickr –> I’ll wait!

Another cool thing about the Holga is the mods. You can do all kinds of cool stuff with this little toy – including making your little camera use 35mm film and shoot pictures showing the film sprocket holes! Not sure what I mean? Here is an example of a Holga shot with a modification to use 35mm film and show the sprocket holes:

Here are a list of some really good Holga sites – I have some film to develop from my own Holga – I just need to remember to order more developer! When I process my Holga film with a 35mm mod – I will take some pictures showing my Holga and the development process so stay tuned for that post!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holga

http://www.holgamods.com/

http://thefilmage.blogspot.com/2011/04/modifications-for-holga-120.html

http://www.amazon.com/Holga-144120-120N-Plastic-Camera/dp/B000AL8JKW

Happy Snapping!

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