This was my second time in Hongkong but this time it did not rain! I had some wonderful experience on the peak last time so I decided to go up there again. This time, the tram all the way up to the peak was under maintenance and did not operate at all. Brocken Peak tram = Taxi to the top and back down.
The guy at the hotel reception told me to drive only with the meter on. If the cab driver does not want to do this and offers me some outrageous prices (circling around 350 Sin Dollar), then I shall get out of the taxi, take a photo of the license plate and walk away. Good idea, just make sure that you are stronger than the taxi driver. Hint: Whenever you should get up there, use the same location to get a taxi as they let you off. Otherwise it is way too expensive and you run into the situation as described above!
Photography Tip:
If you have some bright light and some way too dark areas, use the aperture compensation. Typically dial -1 at the aperture compensation. If this is not enough, set up bracketing. And this is the hot tip – leave the aperture compensation as it is when you have the above described situation.
What does this mean? You simply set the anchor point for the bracketing series at -1. Let us say, you set up a 3 exposure 2 EV, then you will get 3 photos starting at -1, -3 and +1. If you would go from 0, the burst would be 0, -2 and +2. Usually +2 is a little too bright and is of none use.
Simply jump over to an HDR program like Photomatix to create the final image.
