[photographer]

after visiting this website :HDR Tutorial Part 2 ? High Dynamic Range Photography
i was inspired and decide to do it myself
after looking at different posts about auto bracketing or auto exposure
i still don't understand, is there a method to change those settings in my k-x?
like for doing hdr the website said you need to have auto exposure, where can you find it?
for doing long exposure, i tried one before in nigeria falls and the picture was so bright
what are the requirements ? like how many iso should i use and aperture? (etc...)
Thanks a lot, i really appreciate your answer and willing to learn

extra question: how can you do multi exposure on a k-x? thanks a lot

Thanks!!!!

[Adam]

The k-x doesn't have built-in hdr but the bracketing mode is found in the drive mode menu.

[philbaum]

after visiting this website :HDR Tutorial Part 2 ? High Dynamic Range Photography
i was inspired and decide to do it myself
after looking at different posts about auto bracketing or auto exposure
i still don't understand, is there a method to change those settings in my k-x?
like for doing hdr the website said you need to have auto exposure, where can you find it?
for doing long exposure, i tried one before in nigeria falls and the picture was so bright
what are the requirements ? like how many iso should i use and aperture? (etc...)
Thanks a lot, i really appreciate your answer and willing to learn

extra question: how can you do multi exposure on a k-x? thanks a lot

Thanks!!!!

The auto-bracketing provided by Kx and several other cameras, not all, is really all you need to do HDR. There are probably a dozen hdr programs that will then take you photos and allow you to combine and adjust them in creative ways. The in-camera hdr function in cameras such as K5 are not really that useful since they only offer limited flexibility, and no chance to go back and tweak the results the next day.

One can even do hdr exposures without the in camera auto bracketing, but its a bit more time consuming. Enjoy!!

[Just1MoreDave]

Pentax calls it Exposure Bracketing. The manual starts talking about it on page 109. The K-x can do three shots, with a maximum of three stops between each image. Some cameras can do more, but you can duplicate that by combining Exposure Bracketing with Exposure Compensation. Say you want six shots, one stop apart. Set up bracketing for one stop, then use exposure compensation to -1.0 Ev. The camera will take three shots at -2.0, -1.0 and 0.0 Ev. Then change compensation to +2.0, and shoot again to get +1.0, +2.0 and +3.0.

There are some hard parts not mentioned in (my quick read of) the tutorial. If it's fairly dark, you might have trouble with the camera's meter, because it's beyond the meter's ability to measure light. The meter display will flash to tell you this. Or, the meter will get fooled by really bright but small points of light surrounded by dark - for example, the meter does badly with a full moon with typical lenses. For these situations, trial and error in M mode to get a good histogram works. Another hard part is stuff moving between shots: trees blowing in the wind, the moon traveling in its orbit, etc. You mentioned waterfalls; the water is going to be a problem for the HDR software, because it's different in each shot. Your software might have tried to combine all the water exposures together and gotten all white. (That's one reason to use single-shot HDR.)

I keep trying this with mixed results.

[mde1970]

couple of point to remember. Don’t change F-stop between exposures as this will alter the DOF (make sure the only thing you change is shutter speed). As has already been mentioned, you'll get better results if the subject is stationary so perhaps waterfall is not going to work well.

I've used Picturenaut to combine the exposures & do tone-mapping. Its free and gives pretty good results (although not the psychedelic stuff that some HDR software gives).

Picturenaut Overview

[mgvh]

I think the K-x does indeed have HDR. Click on INFO and look for the HDR which alternates between OFF--ON 1-Std--ON 2-Strong.
It turns off image stabilization, so you do want to be using a tripod. It takes 3 quick shots in a row and then produces a single composite in-camera.
Another alternative I have used to good effect is AutoHDR. It's not true HDR (it's actually tone-mapping), but it produces interesting results. The best thing about it is that it only requires a single image. (Ie, you don't need the 3+ bracketed images.)

[wildweasel]

As mgvh said, it does have HDR built in, and it works pretty well as long as you use a tripod.