Nikon D7000 manual 125

Chapter 4 ■ Getting the Right Exposure 125

3.Still holding down the bracketing setting button, rotate the main dial until the 3F setting is made. This will take a total of three exposures, one at the metered expo- sure, one 1 stop under, and one 1 stop over.

4.Rotate the release mode dial to one of the continuous shooting modes. This will ensure that all three bracketed shots are taken consecutively once you’ve triggered the shutter with the remote release.

5.Set the D7000 to S (Shutter-priority). This forces the D7000 to bracket the expo- sures by changing the shutter speed. You don’t want the bracketed exposures to have different aperture settings, because the depth-of-field will change, perhaps enough to disturb a smooth merger of the final shots.

6.Hold down the QUAL button and choose RAW exposures. You’ll need RAW files to give you the 16-bit high dynamic range images that the Merge to HDR feature processes best.

7.Manually focus or autofocus the D7000.

8.Trigger the remote release to take all the exposures in the bracketed set. Repeat if you like.

9.Copy your images to your computer and continue with the Merge to HDR steps listed next.

The next steps show you how to combine the separate exposures into one merged high dynamic range image. The sample images in Figure 4.16 show the results you can get from a three-shot bracketed sequence.

1.If you use an application to transfer the files to your computer, make sure it does not make any adjustments to brightness, contrast, or exposure. You want the real raw information for Merge to HDR to work with. If you do everything correctly, you’ll end up with at least three photos like the ones shown in Figures 4.16.

2.Load the images into Photoshop using your preferred RAW converter. Make sure the 16-bits-per-channel depth is retained (don’t reduce them to 8-bit files). You can load them ahead of time and save as 16-bit Photoshop PSD files, as I did for my example photos.

3.Activate Merge to HDR by choosing File > Automate > Merge to HDR Pro.

4.Select the photos to be merged, as shown in Figure 4.17, where I have specified the three 16-bit NEF files. You’ll note a checkbox that can be used to automatically align the images if they were not taken with the D7000 mounted on a rock-steady support.

5.Once HDR merge has done its thing, you must save in PSD, PFM, TIFF, or EXR formats to retain the 16-bit file’s floating-point data, in case you want to work with the HDR image later. Otherwise, you can convert to a normal 24-bit file and save in any compatible format.