The way I set up my camera
The technique I am using pretty often to create my pictures is called HDR. This is an abbreviation and stands for High Dynamic range. There are a few thing that you have to do in order to create an HDR photo.
My favor is to shoot landscapes and I always have my tripod with me. There is that magical triangle between ISO, shutter speed and F-Stop to make a good picture. How do I configure my camera now to make the best picture? Since I am on a tripod the ISO and the shutter speed do not really matter unless you have moving parts in the pictures that are not supposed to move. Let us say that there is nothing moving.
The first thing I do to my camera is putting it into the A Mode. The A-Mode stands for Aperture-Priority-Mode, meaning I get to choose the F-Stop and the camera is calculating the corresponding shutter speed.
Second I will put the ISO to the lowest “allowed” value, in my case it is 100. This means that we will later not have noise in the picture.
Third, I change my camera to the bracketing mode with 2 Stops within between (please refer to your manual of your camera). The bracketing mode makes 3 or more pictures pictures. At my settings, one overexposed, one underexposed and one that the camera would take with the above mentioned settings. Since the camera is in A Mode, it will not change the F Stop, it will play with the shutter time.
Forth thing and a general (digital) photography trick / tip: Put your camera picture settings to RAW. The RAW file format add a lot of value to image post processing! You can later on change a lot of bars in the software to re-create the picture the way you want to have it done.
Last, but not least, chose an F Stop bigger than 7 so you are sure that everything is sharp in the picture.
Now all the time you push the trigger, you will get 3 pictures that will be later on used to make one final image.
For landscape photography I personally own a Nikon D610 with the 14-24mm lens and the Sony A7R in combination with the 16-35mm lens.
[fancy_header type=”2″ subtitle=””]Summarized about what I change to make photographs[/fancy_header]
– Aperture priority mode setting
– ISO 100 (Or lowest the camera allows)
– Bracketing mode
– RAW Image Format (always)
