It’s been a while since I showed off any HDR images, and since then the software has improved a bit and I seem to have acquired a camera which can save me all the trouble of faffing around in software by doing the merging stuff itself. So, how good is the 5D Mark III’s built in HDR? Well, it depends. You obviously don’t have as much control as you would if you did the job in Photoshop or another package, but there are a few presets to chose from, which in the right conditions can produce some moderately appealing images.

This is a fairly restrained version of Newcastle’s Central Arcade. It’s an interesting place to photograph because of the mixture of light sources – lamps, light from shop windows, bright light from the glass roof, and so on.

Central Arcade HDR

Then again, with a different effect selected, you get more of the stereotypical HDR look:

Central Arcade OTT HDR

This is the kind of thing that I quite like in small doses, but I know other people hate…

I think the extreme treatment works well for this view of the Tyne River God at Newcastle Civic Centre:

River God HDR

But what it can’t cope with very well is movement between images. Here’s one where some people got a bit chopped up. Using a more conventional software approach would sort this out, but here it is for your amusement anyway

Emmerson Chambers HDRoops

All good fun, anyway. I may well do some more of this…

Errr, oops? That’s what a lazy weekend does for me, apparently. That’s a rather big rise today, which I hope will prove to be temporary…

As it looked like being a nice day, I took the Canon 5D to work with me in the hope of giving it an outing at lunchtime. And quite remarkably, it was still warm and sunny at the appropriate time, so I went for a walk:

Lunchtime walk
Walking for 00:56:31
2.31 mi @ 24:28 min/mi

I took some pictures, including a test of one of my camera’s fun features which I’ll tell you about later, but for now here’s a quite ridiculous sign in Haymarket Bus Station, which is making a quite unfounded claim:

Oh yes they do!

If you haven’t been keeping your head in a bucket for the last week, you’ll probably have heard about the entertaining case of FunnyJunk[1] hiring a lawyer to sue that nice Mr Oatmeal because he wasn’t happy about them lifting his content. Now in most people’s versions of reality that sounds a bit backwards, but we are talking lawyers here. As I mentioned last week, Matthew Inman’s response to this was superb. Rather than pay the demanded $20,000, he mocked the lawyer and his client, and started a campaign to raise $20,000 for charity. At this moment, the campaign has raised a whisker under $180,000, which is quite a lot.

But the story is far from over. The latest bit is that the lawyer got very upset about being mocked, and is now personally suing Matthew Inman, IndieGoGo (the site being used to raise the funds) and in a fit of extreme silliness, the actual bloody charities. This is all nicely documented (in four parts, so far!) at Popehat:

Hey, Did Somebody Say Something Was Going On With The Oatmeal?

How Dare You! That’s The Wrong Kind of Bullying!

The Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk, Part III: Charles Carreon’s Lifetime-Movie-Style Dysfunctional Relationship With the Internet

The Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk, Part IV: Charles Carreon Sues Everybody

All of which is highly entertaining, but I think people have missed something. There have been suggestions that Carreon is engaged in some kind of performance art, satirical comedy, or something along those lines, but I have another theory, and the clue is there in his name.

Carreon — Carry On!

Yes, it’s really the plot of a revived, modernised version of those classic[2] British film comedies, such as Carry on at Your Convenience, Carry on Camping, and many more. I’m sure all will be revealed soon, and how we’ll all laugh. Well, most of us are laughing already, which is a good start.

[1] No, still not linking to it
[2] Note: with the possible exception of Carry on up the Khyber, classic may be a little generous…