Stephan's Photography Pages
Links to other digital photography sites
Foto Lens (Bellville, South Africa)
Below follows some lens comparisons, and some shadow and highlight processing by special software.
| Why you spend
extra money when buying lenses. The following pictures show the difference in quality between the Sigma 70-300 F4-5.6 II Macro Super and the Sigma 70-300 F4-5.6 II Macro Super APO Devil's peak area, Cape Town, South Africa. Not cropped but Resized to 800x600 from a photo taken at 300mm (480mm equiv) on the Canon EOS 300D.
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| Sigma
70-300 F4-5.6 II Macro Super
|
Sigma
70-300 F4-5.6 Macro Super APO
|
| Cropped and
resized from full sized photo taken at 300mm once
again.
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|
Here follows my efforts to
solve the problems of high contrast in bright South
African light.
I have found the following Photomatix
software to do the
job, and it does it well. In their own
words I will quote directly
from their website:.
"Obtain Details in
both Highlights and Shadows"
"Photomatix extends the dynamic range of your
digital photographs or scanned films.
This exposure blending software solves the problem of
blown out highlights and
loss of contrast in shadows. Photomatix works from images
taken under different
exposures, combining them into one image with increased
dynamic range. This
process known as HDR compression produces an image that
you can display on
monitors or printers while preserving the details of the
original scene in highlights
and shadows. "
The examples below were resized for
bandwidth reasons. Below the thumbnails follow 800 x 600
pictures
to assist with seeing the
details better.
| Underexposed (- 2/3 EV)
|
Correctly exposed
(according to frame average metering)
|
| Overexposed (+2/3 EV)
|
Processed by Photomatix 1.3 beta
|
Correctly exposed (according to frame average metering)
Underexposed (- 2/3 EV)
Overexposed (+2/3 EV)
Processed by Photomatix 1.3 beta
