Combining shots - how?

[Cris_L]

I often read in magazines etc that a photographer took two (or more) shots and combined them. ie one for the land and one for the sky.

I understand why they do this but I've no idea how.

If the first was metered for the land and the second for the sky then surely as the camera had ben moved the two photo's wouldnt match?

And if they did how on earth do they combine them???

confused!! :shrug:

 

[cowasaki]

I often read in magazines etc that a photographer took two (or more) shots and combined them. ie one for the land and one for the sky.

I understand why they do this but I've no idea how.

If the first was metered for the land and the second for the sky then surely as the camera had ben moved the two photo's wouldnt match?

And if they did how on earth do they combine them???

confused!! :shrug:

If you take two shots with the camera on a tripod and meter one for the sky and one for the land then they will match albeit one darker than then other.

Now place one on top of the other in Photoshop and select the sky layer then use the eraser to delete the land so that you can see the land from the land layer through the sky layer.

Simplified but that is basically what you do OR you use HDR to combine them

 

[janbokev]

there is a couple of programs out there , the one I use is photoshop and use the photomerge function , as simple as that or I have another program that is just for panaramo which is PTGui which is a standalone and much cheaper

 

[marky.b]

with regards to exposure . take a reading from the sky and take one from the foreground.
.you could set the shot up on the tripod, and pull it back to point at the sky and then push it forward to read the ground exposure . then in manual mode set the speed for the sky say 1/200th sec and shoot then drop speed down to what ever the foreground is say 1/30th sec and shoot
its a good idea to write down the 2 photos numbers. coz when you get home it can be hard trying to work out which is which, especialy if you got lots of the same scene, trust me ive done it.
and when i say number i dont mean the number on the card ie: 20 of 200
the actual shutter number ie: 1050

 

[HoppyUK]

HDR - High Dynamic Range. Basically taking two or more images at different exposure levels and merging them in post processing.

You can make it as hard as you like, taking loads of images at a wide range of exposures, on a tripod etc, but for most things just two - one shot 2 stops under and one 2 stops over - is all you need. That usually gives a quite moderate result, not too extreme. It's really easy if you set the camera to auto bracketing - meter as normal and it will then take three pictures, -2, 0, +2, in about half a second. Job done.

The pictures are taken so close together that subject movement between exposures is minimised, and some HDR programmes will also get rid of any ghosting automatically.