All the ones I'll be posting are partial HDR's, constructed with FDRTools. This one and tomorrow's were constructed from a three shot bracketed sequence, while the ones I'll be posting on Sunday and Monday were created from a single shot. In all four cases I've used the sky from the original shot (or one of the originals).

Of the four I think that the one I'll be posting on Monday is probably my favourite, followed by this one, then Sunday's, then tomorrow's - but I'm pretty happy with all of them.

Oh, and the only other thing I can tell you about them is that they were all shot with a 400D - which I've borrowed to use with the Tamron lens.

All being well I should be back to posting more frequently in the near future. I'm currently writing a review of the Tamron AF 11-18mm F/4.5-5.6 Di II LD Aspherical [IF] for Digital SLR User magazine so will be out and about over the next few days putting it through its paces. On that basis, I'd be interested to hear if any of you have used it as it's not a lens I've tried before.

As for this shot: it was taken last summer, when we took the kids to Centre Parcs, and is a shot of Libby, Finley and Tabitha. It's a single image HDR, processed with FDRTools then converted to black and white and toned (using a Curve) in Photoshop.

Personally, I prefer the previous one I posted, but I'm reasonably happy with this one too.

If you're interested, the original is here:

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This time around I decided to try an HDR version so used Photomatix Pro to generate and tone map a pseudo-HDR image. If you take a look at the original, you'll see that this version has a lot more detail and texture, especially on the surface of the object:

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The rest of the changes were fairly straightforward (Curves, Hue/Saturation, and so on) other than that I used the sky from the original image, not the tone mapped version. If you've tried single shot HDR's you'll know that one of the major problems is that they can be quite noisy. This doesn't much matter for textured areas of an image - such as the sand and scratched object in this image - but can be very noticeable in smoother areas such as the sky.

As always, let me know what you think.

I realise this won't be to everyone's taste, but a) it's different, and b) I really like the how the different points of focus appears to be on different planes; i.e. part of the ironwork, some of the background, and so on.

And I haven't posted the EXIF data, as it isn't really relevant, but the beach shot was taken with the f/8.0 aperture insert.

All that said, we did manage to take the kids to the park for a while this afternoon and I managed to find a bit of time to try out my new lens, a Lensbaby 3G. If you've been visiting chromasia for a while you may remember that I posted some shots in 2005 taken with a Lensbaby 2.0, some of which I was quite pleased with (e.g. this one and this one). What I never really got the hang of though was the lack of control; i.e. the focus with the Lensbaby 2.0 can be continuously varied, but not locked. The Lensbaby 3G, on the other hand, allows you to lock the focus and, as a result, is considerably easier to use.

Anyway, this is a shot of Rhowan, taken at f/2.8, and the blur is a consequence of the lens; i.e. it wasn't added during post-production. And I know I've posted several portraits of Rhowan that aren't entirely dissimilar to this one, but it's a style that seems to suit her.

On a side note: Libby took some shots of me photographing the kids that I've posted here:

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I was trying to photograph Harmony, who you can see running off in the top-right corner of the first shot, but I was slightly hampered by Tabitha's attempts to help out :-)