Shooting HDR with the X100

I went out to shoot some street photos around Dublin yesterday and I ended up conducting an impromptu experiment. I had taken my two fuji cameras with me. My X100 and XE–1. The XE–1 had the 35mm lens on it and the X100 with its wider 23mm gave me a good amount of flexibility. However, I ended up just using the X100 the whole time. As I was walking through Dublin, I’m not sure whether it was the light, or the ridiculous amount of roadworks, or the fact that I was watching a class on the subject the night before on Kelby one, but I was suddenly more aware of the textures and grittiness all around me, and so I decided to try some HDR.

It turns out the X100 is a great little camera for HDR. While it can only do three shots on auto bracketing, this was perfect for what I wanted to do. The way it shoots them is really good for HDR too. They are taken in rapid succession, almost like it was one shot. It takes a while to write them to the card then, which in the past I have found quite frustrating, but in this case it wasn’t a big deal as I wasn’t in any hurry or trying to capture moving objects.

Back on the computer I put the shots together using a combination of Lightroom and Photomatix. I hadn’t actually used Photomatix in ages, and I’m quite impressed with the new version (version 5). Fixing ghosts and getting a good balance now seems easier than ever.

Once I had processed them and created a tone mapped Image I sent it back to Lightroom where I used one of my Quick Lux presets to add some additional styling to the shots. I’m really happy with the way they turned out. I don’t do much HDR so I’m sure I’m breaking all sorts of HDR rules but it’s great to get such complexity out of such a small camera. I should point out that this is the older X100 too, not the X100s.

Anyway, here are some of the results of my playing around. Enjoy….

You can see the full set over on my Smug Mug Page. Also, if you like these please visit my Streets of Dublin Project (which is what these shots are destined for)

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