With my late summer interest in waterfalls - I had great vision how this would turn out. In the end, I need to go back.
But not to lose the photo - or a learning opportunity - I decided to see what the difference is between a 1 shot HDR effect and a 3 shot HDR involving the motion of water.
I like to have the option with the water movement. The shot was set up on the slow side. Tripod for sure.
This is the basic shot.
1/30 f/22
EV 0.0
Aperture Priority
ISO 200
Focal Length 32 mm
For the associated HDR bracket, I use EV values of +2 and -2.
Going back and doing it over again, I'd go with a faster speed. There are no DOF issues or concerns. Lesson learned - and a reason to go back.
This a composite of the 1 and 3 shots.
And so if I were going to work on a shot for this, I might go in this direction. I'd use the single shot. I'd try to pull out some of the greens and sharpen it up a bit.
I think the better plan would be to shoot with a higher speed, and let the 3 image merger get the effect of the moving water.
It was bound to happen.
The ol' XPS420 went for 8 strong years. I'm guessing it was the power supply that went out. I've been able to get data off of the hard drive and it still moves. (How that is done is another story.)
The good news is that without the hard drive access, I didn't lose any files or data. The backup plan was solid. (It should be, that's what I do for a living. Would have been a real problem if I was missing something.)
About 2 years ago, I bought a WD 3 TB My Cloud. This sits on the home network versus previous WD devices that attached directly to the PC. It is accessible to all the PCs in the house. File access is almost as fast as on the local drive. Best addition to the house in a long time. That is the backbone of my backup system. I've been using the WD backup program for years - and it has always been rock solid.
Back to the crash, I could probably get out of this with a new power supply. But that is not what I do best. I pulled the hard drive out of the case, and it had 2008 on the label. Good drive, been spinning almost constantly since purchase. I can't complain. Started on Vista, upgraded to W7 and finally to W10.
But spending $100 to fix an 8 year old unit is not what I do best - especially if I see it as a sign from the tea leaves that I need to upgrade my rig. Who am I to stand in the way of that vision?
I've been designing my next system over the last few days. In the past I've always gone to Dell. And I've liked the products that I've purchased from them. This time, I'm going the design my own route. For what I was going to spend with Dell, I can build a much better system. I was actually going to build my own - but the store I'm dealing with is charging me virtually a few peanuts to build, let them do it. I'll have time when I'm retired.
We're still nailing down the details, but looks like a 6th gen I5 processor for horse power and a combo of a solid state drive and spinning disk for storage. I'll go with 16 gig memory. The rest is just details. Should be enough to work on a few photos?
I'm currently working on a laptop that I bought for C - and it didn't quite work out. It has 4th Gen i5 processor. Works OK - but I'd get frustrated if I used this as a primary work machine. It has 6 gig of memory - and that might be slowing me down a bit as well. It is not all bad - it is a great life boat.
I'll probably get the new machine this week. I promised C next weekend we're doing the Christmas Cards.
