Yokohama, in HDR

As Tracy described below, we had a wonderful few days away (to celebrate her birthday!), and we decided to spend them in the port city of Yokohama. While we have both been here a few times in the past, we hadn't ever really done more than quick shopping trips, so this time we decided to stay and really look around.

As expected, the food was great (Mexican, Italian and of course Chinese in Chinatown!), the temps pretty mild, and the hotel baths hot.

I took my little LX1, and have been experimenting with the resulting shots after work... Some shots I used a tripod and got a wide range of exposures, some I set the camera to 'auto bracket' 3 exposures (handheld), and a few I shot a single image in RAW format, and converted that to HDR. Each method has a different result, and my results even using the same method varied widely. Hmmm. Furthermore, the sky of the two night scenes suffered some wierdness when I resized them for the blog. I might replace them with better ones when I get home.

Here is an example of a single image caught in RAW, and then converted to HDR, then compressed with tone-mapping:















I tried that one with a set of exposures, but the wagging flag looked blurry, so the single RAW was the way to go. This ship is moored next to the ferry pier at Yamashita Park.

This ship is moored a kilometer or two away just in front of the Landmark Tower (65 stories?). The image was 3 shots at +1, 0, and -1 auto bracketed. While slight, you can see the man's image is blurred as he moved during the shooting:



















After hot outside rooftop baths back at the hotel, we went out to see the 'nightview'. Despite the chilly breeze we found a few quiet places to take in the skyline. This image is from a bridge looking back to the Queen's Square. One of those boats had a restaurant on it, but it was just too cold to think about eating on the water!
















We walked as far as the boardwalk on Minato Mirai 21 island, where I took this one in several exposures and a tripod as well:
























There you can actually see the Landmark Tower, and almost count the floors!

We are looking forward to going back sometime, maybe in the summer, and I'm sure we both are eager to explore past the waterfront and Chinatown. Stay tuned for a few HDR views of that area soon!