Blended Exposures

As always when I get a new camera I like to find out what I can get away with exposure wise. So to test this out I deliberately shoot under and over exposed photos to see how much I can recover. I tend to find some cameras handle this kind of post production better than others. So it's good to know what you can get away with as it gives you confidence when out shooting photos for real i.e. not just practising with settings.

For this photo I created two exposures from one RAW file in Lightroom, then blended them together using the gradient tool in photoshop. I prefer this approach to using HDR programs as I don't need a tripod and I also don't have to worry about branches blowing in the wind, people moving etc. as both exposures are from one file. The files sit perfectly over one an other and all I need to do is recover the shadows and stop the highlights blowing.

I never blend to 100% (if that makes sense) as it ends up looking over cooked. I simply aim to protect the shadows and highlights to replicate what I remember seeing at the time I took the photo.