I was testing out my new lens (the replacement for a favorite that had an unfortunate accident) in the local rainforest. I was using it at a decent wide angle (32mm, that’s about 48mm equivalent in old-school 35mm jargon) and decided to take a EV bracketed set for some HDRI post processing, even though I didn’t have a tripod.

I was happy with the original image, and below are the ±1.5 EV photo also taken at the same time. The exposures weren’t so long but with the mirror movement between shots it was long enough to guarantee that I might move and my photos would be out of registration. To complicate things there was a reasonable breeze moving the ferns.

Since my chief bug-bear with currently available HDRi software is image registration, this is the prefect set to test out the new Picturenaut program, which is self promoted  as a new breed of HDR tools. It is free to download, small and compact, fast and easy to use. Just running with all the default settings I got the expected poorly registered result.

Quickly now before time runs out by the end of day, today… have you checked out the great food photography and styling offerings this year on Menu for Hope 5? All money donated goes to help fight world hunger, and you may be one of the lucky ones that grab the Master Food Styling Class with two of my favorite ladies, Denise & Cindie! Or, how about a pair of Lowel Ego lights from Sam of Becks & Posh. Head over to Matt’s to find the west coast offerings with both of these prizes, or to Pim’s to see a complete list of prizes.

Also, here’s another cool opportunity… head over to White on Rice and enter the drawing for a free online Food Photography class by Ron Goldman and Kathleen Clemons.