View from Leckhampton Hill, Cheltenham, UK

[Rogern123]

Sony Alpha 100
f/16
1/25 sec
ISO-100
35mm
HDR, 9 images in Photomatix

Taken on a windy morning so got some ghosting on the branches of the trees. Any suggestions on how to avoid the ghosting?

[Doug Sundseth]

To avoid that sort of ghosting, you need a faster shutter speed. To get a faster shutter speed, you need to open the aperture or increase the ISO, or both.

[baajero]

Beautiful picture. I agree... you have a lot of room to play with to be able to increase your shutter speed. Drop the aperture a couple of notches down and increase your ISO to 400 or so.
I personally still think it's an amazing picture as is though I really wouldn't play with it... these imperfections add character to it

[Rogern123]

Doug, Baajero,

thanks for your replies. Yes, I should have opened the aperture to get a faster exposure, would have sharpened up some of the moving bits. The ghosting I am referring to is caused by the HDR multiple exposures rather than blur within one exposure. My camera does +-0.7 stop bracketing but I wanted more dynamic range so took 3 photos bracketed, then 3 more with +2 stop overexposure then 3 with -2 stops underexposure - 9 photos in total. This has resulted in some of the small branches being duplicated in the final merged pic.

I tried using the auto ghosting removal in Photomatix but wasn't getting good results. I decided for this one that I would ignore the ghosting, it is not that obvious and does make the trees look more bushy

[baajero]

In that case my answer has nothing to do with your question lol... apologies my friend... I haven't dipped into the HDR field yet I would love to but can't afford to pay 1000bucks for photoshop now...
but If I guess a general rule would be to keep the timing minimal between the 9 pictures with fast shutter speeds.
I'd love to see more of your pictures... do you have a blog or something

[Barry Jackson]

baajero,

Photomatix is a stand alone program and is less than $100.00 american.

You used to be able to use the code "stuck in customs" and save ~8.00.

Once processed in photomatix you can then open up the file in one of the free photo editing programs.

[Marcus Reinkensmeyer]

An inviting image, especially the grass foreground. The current positioning of the horizon line seems to split the image in half. You might consider some other vantage points, placing the horizon line one third or two thirds from the bottom of the image. Placing one of the trees a bit more in the foreground may also provide a more powerful perspective.

[Rogern123]

Thanks Marcus, yes I think you are right, a different vantage point would improve it.

[shruggy63]

There are HDR plugins/scripts for Gimp. I've got one but can't vouch for it's effectiveness as I've only used it once. The price makes it worth a look though?