The week started off with cold wet weather. I hated it. I love the sun. I love the warmth that Ra brings to my being. The sun started to peek out here and there during week. For the weekend I planned to head out with the camera.

I stood out in the parking area near and the side of the Devon Road near Montgomery Park. I shot a large number of bracketed images as the sun went down. I had planned on using my Raspberry Pi and gPhoto but I couldn’t get my setup to work. Instead, I used my MacBook with Sofortbild to control my Nikon D40 via the USB port. I wonder what cars passing by must have thought watching a man holding a laptop connected to a camera on a tripod?

To get the right set of bracketed shots I used an app on my photo to decide the range of exposures for Sofortbild. My process was this:

• Set the D40 to aperture priority and take note of exposure reading.
• Use EV Calc app to get the range of exposure needed to get either a +1/-1EV or +2/-2EV change between captures.
• Set the D40 to manual mode.
• Set Sofortbild to capture bracketed images.

The process would have been much easier using the gPhoto. As I detailed in that project, the D40 is set to aperture priority and my script uses gPhoto to capture the first image for analysis. That image is then tossed away and then five images are then capture at different exposure.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any HDR so my skills are a bit rusty. For this shot I combined 7 exposure in Photomatix Pro. I tweaked the image a bit in Photomatix and then some more after pulling it back into Adobe Lightroom 4. My son got to choose the final image.