A shot from tonight. The sun was going down (actually, it was behind the hills)... but wanted to get something to play with. The lighting wasn't the most easy thing, not to mention the dark colored car with a bright sky. This is a shot that was created (from nothing great) by combining multiple RAW conversions. In this case, processing with HDR was not possible (Photoshop said so).

The photo was shot with...
Camera: Canon EOS-1D MkII
Lens: 28-70mm f/2.8L @ 35mm
ISO: 400
Exposure Mode: Manual
Shutter Speed: 1/125th
Aperture: f/4
File Type: RAW+JPG


Since the sky was so bright and the car was so dark, there was no real way to get both properly exposed in the same shot. One of the real advantages of shooting in RAW is has more information than a JPG, and multiple conversions can be created... much like multiple exposures.


With these two conversions, all I needed to do was take the exposure of the car and put it onto the exposure from the sky. To achieve this I cut-out the car (this could also have been done with a mask, but the process is the same).


I layered the two conversions and I was ready to go. At this point, there were just a few finishing touches that were needed (wires, fence, etc.) and I was ready to go


After some touch-ups, here's the final version again.


Not too much work, but this sort of thing can be really handy with photos that have difficult exposures.

-Todd...