Ever taken night scenes, only to be frustrated how the pictures turned out? If the buildings were dark, you’d increase the EV setting to make it brighter… but the lights would become too bright. If you decreased the EV setting to show the beautiful lamps, the buildings would disappear into blackness!

Fortunately, there is a way around it, by shooting the same scene, with different EV settings, and combining the best of those pictures. This trick is commonly known as HDR (though it isn’t technically correct.)

Photoshop CS2 already has a HDR function built in, but CS2 seems to be quite the memory hog, so I kept to Photoshop CS. Still, it is doable with a little effort.

First off, get a tripod.

Pick a nice dark place with lots of highlights and shadows.

Put camera on tripod, on self-timer, on a long exposure. Remember not to move the camera or risk screwing up your shot like so!

If a scene needs 2 seconds to expose properly, shoot one at 4 times its length (8 seconds) and one shot 1/4th of its length (0.5 seconds). If your camera does not have an adjustable shutter speed, just shoot one shot normally, one shot with the EV at +2, and one shot with the EV at -2.

Load all the pictures in Photoshop.

Click on the second brightest image. Ctrl-A (Select All) and then Ctrl-C (Copy) it. Click on the brightest image. Press Ctrl-V (Paste). In the Layers bar, choose Difference, so you can align the image over it. Once done, change the blending mode back to Normal. Ctrl-A (Select All) and then Ctrl-Shift-C (Copy Merged) on the top-most layer.

Click on Add vector mask to add a vector mask.

Hold down the Alt key while clicking inside the white box (the vector mask). Press Ctrl-V (Paste).

Do the same for the next darker image until all of them are on one image.

If you’re more experienced with Photoshop, adjust the Levels of the vector mask (right after pasting the vector mask). This allows greater control over how much of the lights seep through.

You can also copy any image with lots of shadows and highlights, and do the same method onto itself, to decrease the difference between highlights and shadows.

Finished product, with a bit of tweaking. Remember to crop off the edges where the pictures do not align!

Another example, by the pool.

Masjid Jamek (gotta work on the saturation a bit.)

Click on the image for a bigger version.

Of course, you could camp around for the right time when the lights turn on, but the building is still lit by sky light.

Asia’s largest high court.

Giant leaves.

A pathway to the balcony. All pictures (except Masjid Jamek) shot at Hartamas Regency.

One 8th of October 2006, I went for Octoven, a gig in Jamasia out of nothing-to-do-ness, and shot all these shots with my Fujifilm Digital Q1 manual-focus infrared-modded camera. I took only the green channel, being the least noisy (I shot without a filter that blocks normal light, so the infrared was mixed with the lights which were mostly reds and blues.)

Reza Salleh And The Fumakillas. Clockwise from top-left: Melina, from Tempered Mental; Stephanie, from Ground Xero; Hanafi, who rocked harder than I’ve ever seen than in Estranged, complete with wails and funky space effects; Reza Salleh the acoustic singer-songwriter turned alternative rocker (though was he was from there to begin with? I don’t know.)

Top-left: Vima of Qings & Kueens, also the funny emcee; bottom-left: Kevin Theseira on bass; right: Paul shreds at the speed of light to their brand of royal rock and roll. (Speaking of which, I prefer their older stuff, which they don’t seem to play anymore.)

The Great Spy Experiment from Singapore was next. The Strokes and Bloc Party would have been name-dropped by the audience, as they performed solid indie pop. The frontman/guitarist’s strap broke, but he continued rocking, knee bracing his guitar! (Until a strap was lent to him.)

…now I am blue.

So these pictures will have to do.

I shall do this in the style of The Pink Frog, with some connectivity in the story.

Remember before the haze?

When you could spot Genting from near my house?

Where KL was clear? (This is Masjid Jamek.)

Colors were nicely saturated (okay so this doesn’t count because it’s indoors.)

Shooting with a polarizer through a car window gave the sky a cheery color!

Crossed polarizers gave Kingsley‘s yard a hint of purple.

But alas! A freakish square-shaped cloud was brewing!

“We’re down, dude. No power, dude.”

Birds were getting confused by this weather change. “Have you seen my flock?”

“Grab… my… branch… we… will… survive…”

The next day, I found the skies amazingly blue upon coming up the KLCC PUTRA LRT station to take a bus to Bintang Walk. The haze hadn’t kicked in yet.

“Finally, somebody appreciates me and doesn’t treat me like a Siamese twin!”

“Dude, I am your half-brother.”

Yes, I was here a while, since the bus drivers were breaking fast and would only resume at 7:30pm.

Coca Cabana!

The Maxis Tower, with the eyelet, reminds me of Quake 1’s grenade launcher for some reason.

And this looks like the Thunderbolt/Lightning Gun, also from Quake 1.

For some reason this looks like it was shot on film.

Fujifilm should pay me. Maybe in ISO400 chrome film. Or a Fujifilm S3 UVIR, which can shoot infrared without modifications.

…or at least in mooncakes. I love mooncakes. This was shot on mooncake festival evening.

Little knew that I bought William‘s old Nikon Coolpix 2200 camera to modify, into an auto-focus infrared-enabled camera!

From left to right, top to bottom:

• The Nikon Coolpix 2200, with 3x zoom and a variety of scene modes e.g. Landscape which would be the closest thing to focus at infinity and a dark aperture.
• It is also the same size as my Canon Powershot A520. Minus the manual controls, sadly, or even an adjustable ISO sensitivity! I detest Nikon for discarding manual controls on entry-level cameras, when it used to have it.
• I opened it up, and touched the flash capacitor at least three times, getting a nice numbing zap each time.
• Spot the SD card slot!
• The auto-focus gears.
• The cursed item – the infrared-blocking filter!
• Upon reassembling, I found it very challenging to reinsert the circuit combs.
• The optical viewfinder is dusty.
• The infrared-blocking filter, removed.
• The tripod mount, plastic, but at least it is not part of the camera. Fazri would appreciate this!

So what happened to it? Why don’t you see me carrying it around?

I killed it. I popped in batteries and a SD card, and it didn’t turn on.

Upon reassembling it, I found two extra pieces that I could not figure where it belonged to/dropped out from. I also had three extra screws!

For some reason, Nikon and I just don’t get along well. I’ve held a Nikon D70s which randomly refused to focus despite having a bright f1.8 lens, and not too dark conditions. I’ve also touched Paul‘s new D80, which had some weird inability to autofocus until he reset something. Not to mention that I am not a fan of the D50’s noise levels, or Nikon’s mellower colors, or the fact that Nikon is not playing catch up or bothering to include newer features the same way Canon did when they came out with the 400D.

At the moment, I guess my manual focus infrared-modded Fujifilm Digital Q1 will have to do.