Kennebunk Bridle Path, Kennebunk ME

Even though it was still only 12 degrees at 2 in the afternoon, I had to get out yesterday. After looking, unsuccessfully, for the Snowy Owl at the beach again, I decided to experiment with some snowscape HDR, using more aggressive settings on the Sony HX400V than my normal HDR settings. I like to capture the texture of the snow, while keeping both shadows and highlights looking natural. Not an easy task for a digital sensor, especially one as small as the sensor in the HX400V. I set the Exposure Compensation to -1 to keep the sun on the snow from burning out, and then set the in camera HDR to level 6 to bring the shadows back into range. It worked fairly well. I had to lighten the overall image in Lightroom, but I am happy with the results. On the other hand, Auto HDR and -1/3 EV did almost as well. 🙂

Sony HX400V at 52mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: 1/800th @ f6.3 @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. (I used TouchRetouch to remove a small branch that intruded into the lower left part of the frame.)