You may have noticed, that a lot of my recent photos (almost all of them) are mostly blue hour and night shots. I’m not that happy about that, but thats what my luck with weather was recently. It is either crazy sunny, or raining. And in those cases I can only take shots in the evening. But a little more diversity would be nice.

Todays photo is of the Liberty bridge in Budapest. This is a HDR from 4 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Manual blend, Number of exposures: 2, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 18mm, Aperture: 11, Middle exposure time: 13s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 47.49182, 19.05069

Quick tip for Lightroom

A little tip I thought about when editing today :) You may have noticed, then when you sync the white balance between photos in Lightroom, sometimes you don’t get the same white balance on all the photos. The reason is simple. Lightroom syncs your selection, not the exact white balance. So if you chosen for instance Auto, it will sinc that, and calculate auto white balance for every photo. If you chosen As shot, all photos will have a white balance the same what they were shot in, and so on.

So what to do if you need the exact same white balance in all photos (which is mostly required for HDR photos). You need to switch to Custom white balance. That will keep the last used white balance settings, and if you sync it, it will sync the exact values for white balance.

From the castle

The new renovated areas of the Buda castle in Budapest give so many nice views of the city and of the parliament. You just needs a long enough lens, and its still quite far from it. But so worth a visit :)

This is a blend from 2 exposures, one main for most of the photo, second for the lights on the parliament.

Technique: Manual blend, Number of exposures: 2, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS II, Focal length: 130mm, Aperture: 10, Middle exposure time: 3.2s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 47.49590, 19.04130

It’s quite interesting to take panoramas on places where I took none before. The views they provide are quite different to normal one shot photos. Same here. This is a view from in front of the Hungarian Parliament, including the Buda Castle and the Chain bridge. I went quite wide, as I wanted the whole bridge in the shot. Going more up or down would not help much, as there is just water and sky there.

This is a 3 tile panorama, each tile from 3 exposures. Combined first in PTgui and the blended manually in Photoshop.

Technique: Manual blend, Number of exposures: 3×3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS II, Focal length: 123mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 3.2s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 47.50477, 19.04471

It’s very rare to see the Chain bridge completely empty. But if you go there at 4am, you may have luck and be the only one there :)

This is a two tile panorama, created from 3 exposures each.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 2×5, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 26mm, Aperture: 13, Middle exposure time: 5.0s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 47.49951, 19.04669

Continuing with another year, the 2012. That was quite a great year, with many new friends, many new locations, many new photos :) This one was from Budapest :)