HDR and panorama from Shringeri.

After sailing through Kuduremukh western ghats, we reached Shringeri on 21-09-2013. It was hardly 2hrs journey mainly due to ghat section. It is really mesmerizing experience driving through western ghats during monsoon season. Rolling back to mainstream, father wanted to visit Shringeri to spend some time in temple town. Despite, being only 2hr journey, lot of hurdles made us to refrain from visiting the beautiful Malnad temple. This time the visit was pre-planned and we made it too. As always, I did some experiments with my favorite partner ;-). I did not try much except for some HDR and panorama. Last time, I did shoot a HDR of preserved ancient temple which is documented here. This time, there were thick clouds over sky which tempted me to grab a HDR with Tunga River. So here is HDR bracketed with 3 exposures. I happy with clouds, vegetation and water being exposed in image except for the colors which would have been more greener if there were more bracketed shots (may be 5).

TUNGA RIVER BASIN, SHRINGERI

Settings:

Camera: Canon EOS 550D
Lens: 18-55mm kit lens
Focal Length: 18mm
Focus Point: Auto
Aperture: f/9.0
ISO: 100
Picture Style: Landscape
White Balance: Cloudy
Metering: Center weighted average
No of images:3
Exposures: --2,0,+2(1/200s for middle one)
ML Firmware: v2.3
Softwares: Luminance HDR (Fatal operator), GIMP

From this blog onwards, I am modifying setting details slightly. HDRs are always bracketed in 'Manual focus' mode and hence I am shifting from Focus to Focus point. Sometimes we will have to make manual focus points to concentrate on subject of interest. I will mention the focus point explicitly if set to manual

Next is panorama of Tunga river nearby temple. Since the monsoon has almost ended, not much water could be seen. My intention was to grab wider image of the river with hillocks. Here is 5 image stitch of sweet Tunga river of Shringeri!

PANORAMIC VIEW OF SWEET TUNGA RIVER BASIN