This follows from my first attempt at 'HDR-style' photography with ImageJ. I have abandoned my old approach, which used ImageJ macros, and have developed a couple of plugins which are easier to use.

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Here are some photos I took when I attended the 1 day Nature Photography course at the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust at Brandon Marsh. The day was aimed at complete beginners but there were people there with a variety of experience levels.

We were given various themes to photograph, starting with Colour, then Patterns & Texture, and finally Mood & Atmosphere. Later, we had to choose our own theme and put together a series of photos illustrating it.

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Earlier in the year, I tried to take some photos using an old telephoto lens which wouldn't focus on my Nikon D40 camera. The experience taught me that a modern autofocus camera really needs an autofocus lens. Older manual focus cameras had viewfinders designed to make it easy to focus accurately. Most modern cameras (at least in the 'amateur' price range) aren't as easy to focus.

I ordered the Nikon 55-200 VR lens on Sunday and it arrived this morning, which was impressively quick. I have only had time to do a quick test of the vibration reduction and I must say, I'm impressed.

I took 6 photos, all at the 200mm end of the lens, at 1/10s exposure. The first 3 had VR switched off, the next 3 had VR switched on. The increase in photo sharpness was remarkable.

You can't really see any difference in the thumbnails but the photo on the left was taken without VR. The 2nd photo used VR. Click on the thumbnails to see a larger version.

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The weather wasn't terribly good this year but at least it was only a bit damp, unlike last year when there were hailstorms.

This year's show felt like it had been scaled down a bit - there seemed to be less variety of events in the main arena. There wasn't a dedicated food tent but most of the same food vendors were there, just not concentrated in one area.

We were there for the Hamster show but we had some free time to walk around the site and see some of the events.

There were a lot of horse-related events in the main arena. This one involved riders having to pick up litter using spiked sticks. You can tell it was cold from the steam coming out of the horse's nostrils.

Ferret Racing. This was the winning ferret at the 2 o'clock race. Luckily it was also the one we bet on.

I was watching one of the falconry events and the bird landed on one of the loudspeakers near where I was standing.

All of these photos were taken using an old telephoto zoom lens on my Nikon D40. The new cameras can't focus through the old lens but it still works if I'm prepared to focus manually. I thought it wouldn't be a problem but it turned out to be surprisingly difficult to focus accurately. My old manual focus cameras had features such as the split screen rangefinder and fresnel screen. These made it very easy to see when something was in focus. The modern autofocus cameras have a plain screen which isn't as useful. The 'electronic rangefinder' has a dot which appears when focus is achieved but it isn't as easy to use as the old fashioned manual focus system.

I should probably start looking out for a newer lens but I shouldn't complain really. At least the old Nikon lenses still work on the newer cameras, even if they don't have 100% functionality. It's better than nothing.

Photograph taken at a wildcat rescue centre in Hertfordshire.

Some photos of Stevenage. They were taken on my phone, trying to hold it steady for the long-ish exposures, so the picture quality isn't very good.

New Town is very concrete and has no redeeming features.

The High Street in Old Town.

Middle Row - a medieval alleyway running alongside the High Street.

Old Town is much better and is where all the night life is - most of the bars and restaurants seem to be around here. After the training course today, a few of us went for a curry in one of the restaurants on the High Street.

I've been intending to experiment with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, where images maintain details in both the shadows and highlights. Normal photography has a fairly low dynamic range, so if you want to have good shadow detail, highlights are usually over-exposed.

Normally, HDR software requires 3 bracketed exposures but this usually requires a tripod to ensure all 3 photos can be easily aligned and merged to give the HDR image. I thought I would try to come up with a shortcut to allow me to get results close to HDR but without the need to take multiple images or carry a tripod.

My method requires a digital camera which can produce a 16 bit colour file. I use the 'RAW' image format on my Nikon D40, and then convert it to a 16 bit uncompressed TIF using the ViewNX software which came with the camera. Other cameras should be suitable as long as a 16 bit image format is available.

Required Software

• Download and install Imagej and the Calculator Plus plug-in.

• Download the HDR Maker macro and copy it into the ImageJ plugins directory.

• Install any software necessary to load or convert RAW images from the camera. ImageJ has plugins to handle a lot of different image formats.

Procedure

This is obviously biased towards Nikon cameras, the D40 in particular. Instructions for other cameras will vary.

• Set the camera to take RAW images. One way of doing this on the D40 is to go into the Shooting Menu and select Image Quality and choose NEF (RAW) or NEF(RAW) + Jpeg.

• We will need to get a wide range of intensities recorded, so we'll use low contrast to reduce the amount of detail lost in shadows and highlights. On the D40, there are two main ways of doing this. In the Shooting Menu, choose Optimise Image. From there you can either select Softer or go to Custom and set Tone Compression to one of the low contrast options.

• After transferring the images to the computer, use the ViewNX software (which comes with the camera) to convert the raw NEF file to a 16 bit uncompressed TIFF file.

• Load ImageJ and open the 16 bit TIFF.

• Go to the Plugins menu and select 'HDR Maker'.

• The dialogue box gives options for shadow/highlight values. The defaults are 25% and 75% which means the darkest 25% of pixels will be lightened slightly and the lightest 25% (100-75) will be darkened.

• The next options are dodging (lightening shadow areas) and burning (darkening highlights). Higher values have a greater effect.

• The blur value is related to the sharpness of the area where the lightness adjustment takes place. Good values range from 0.9 to 50, and vary depending on the image.

• The saturation value refers to the percentage of pixels which will be set to the extreme light and dark settings after processing.

• The default values are only suggestions and will not work for all images. Feel free to experiment and try different values to obtain a good effect.

The image above shows the output of the macro. The original photo is on the left, and has detail in the sky but the shadows are very dark. The middle image is the output from the HDR Maker macro. The image on the right is the original photo with the brightness and contrast increased to show detail in the shadows. This has resulted in losing all detail in the sky. Click on the image for a full size version.

The images used above are only to illustrate the procedure, rather than examples of good photography. The HDR macro is an early version and needs more development. The main problem is the lack of contrast in the shadow areas. I tried different values for shadow/highlight/dodge/burn but couldn't get an image which gave 'punchy' detail such as in the right hand image. With any luck I'll be able to sort this out in a future version.

(Entry backdated to when the photo was taken)

A photo of the newlyweds having their first dance. I don't know about you, but I always think newlywed looks like it should be a welsh word or place name.

This was originally a colour photograph, taken on Saturday with my new Nikon D40. This evening I had a play around with a Black & White photography plugin for the GIMP graphics program.

The picture was originally converted to a high contrast B&W image but that left the church looking washed out. I created a second layer which used 'Desaturate' to give an image with more detail in the highlights. I adjusted the transparency and used the eraser to selectively delete areas to get a good balance between detail and contast.

I took delivery of a Nikon D40 camera earlier in the week. I've not had chance to play around properly yet but I've been happy with the photos so far.

One of the hamsters eating a mealworm

Some nettle leaves

A magnified part of the above image, showing the hairs on the leaves.

Some pinhole photos taken along the Sowe Valley Footpath in Coventry.

Some pinhole photos taken yesterday around Anstey near Leicester.

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A selection of pinhole photos taken around Charterhouse Fields in Coventry

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Some photographs taken from the top of the bell tower at the old cathedral.

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Sunday was World Pinhole Photography Day, where photographers are invited to take photographs using a pinhole camera.

These photographs were all taken over the weekend. Since they were taken on film, it took me a couple of days to develop the negatives, scan them in and prepare them for uploading.

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