Canon doesn't want you to shoot bracketed exposures for HDR, unless you buy the flagship model EOS 1D. Thankfully, smart people keep coming up with solutions for the rest of us.

Meet the latest creation of Lukasz Panek:

Yep. It's the minimalist approach. Just a trigger plugged into the remote jack.

So, how does Luk's HDR-Jack compare to other do-it-yourself solutions like Steve's infamous DS-controller or Joergen's Bracketmeister?

• Smaller (tiny enough to loose it...)
• Needs no external power source: One battery less to worry about.
• No setup/boot time required at all.
• Least configurable.
• Hardwired to shoot brackets from 1/250 sec to 16 sec in 2 EV intervals.
• No cable release, you have to touch the camera to start shooting.

Actually, there is more to it, because it has several other useful modes than just HDR brackets.

Head over to Luk's page for a tutorial on how to build your own. Gotta love open source hardware design! If touching a soldiering iron turns you into a safety hazard, you might also consider pestering Luk to send you an handmade HDR-Jack for a fee.

Recently I realized that I spend more time talking about HDRI, than actually showing anything. How can you believe me I know what I'm talking about?
That's when I decided to build a new portfolio of my panoramic work, built upon the fabulous krpano flash viewer.

Hope this new gallery proves me some street creds in HDR shooting, stitching and tonemapping. Make sure to bring some time, and definitely try the Fullscreen mode. Promise!

Christian Bloch

This is big, friends! The first real HDR display has been revealed at the ISE show in Amsterdam, available in Q2 from projector-maker SIM2 and powered by Dolby Vision.

• Display: LCD panel and power LED BLU (2,206 high-power LEDs) plus HDR technology
• Peak brightness: >4000 cd/m2
• Size: 47 inches
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Full HD
• Contrast ratio (full on/full off): Infinite (over 1000000:1)
• Full 16-bit processing (65,536 shades per color) and widest range of displayable colors
• Luminance uniformity: more than 95 percent through the LCD panel
• White point: adjustable
• Professional inputs, including HD-SDI
• Silicon: Xilinx Virtex field programmable gate array (FPGA) chipsets

If these specs from the press release make it into the final production model, this baby is even 1000 cd/m2 brighter and 10 inches larger than the infamous Brightside display. It certainly won't be cheap. Engadget reports that Q2 will bring us the professional version (which I'm personally craving for color grading and VFX shot reviews), followed by a consumer version in September.

Good times ahead. It's great to see Dolby ramping up the involvement. Dolby is not only a trusted brand, they also have all the best brain power and tech patents to pull it off and actually push HDR standards into the market. Check out Dolby's HDR Video page (hint: it's in the home entertainment section of their site)!

... and then there's the

monthly site update

sIBL-of-the-month is a drop dead gorgeous viewpoint in Grand Canyon, and the race for front seats in the Hot-on-Flickr gallery has started again.

Nope, this is not a product, but a homegrown remote controller that is easily replicated. It's also a testament how far HDR photographers have to go, because Canon keeps ignoring their needs. 30 seconds maximum exposure is ridiculous for nightshots, and 3-frame exposure bracketing is even more ridiculous.

I reported about Steve Chapman's ingenious Nintendo DS-controller before (which is evolving into a real powerhouse of features, btw). But if all you want is shooting 7-frame brackets with +-2 EV intervals, no matter how long your longest exposure, then Joergen Geeds might have just found the solution for you:

Bracketmeister 0.32 on Arduino interface

What looks like a basement project for months is actually all set up on ready-made hardware. It is an Arduino USB board with a Nokia display, ready to use if you know how to code.
Joergen is nice enough to provide the Bracketmeister code as open source, so check it out. While you're there, make sure to see some of his amazing views of New York City!

I'm pretty proud of this update:

LightBitch is now officially the first LightWave plugin that automatically checks for updates. It's not only sending you to a webpage, no, it literally goes online: LightBitch checks on this server and notifies you of a new version of itself:



Pretty cool, eh? Honestly, I call this my biggest LScript stunt so far - considering that not even LightWave itself has this ability.

Next up is my Smart IBL plugin. We'll see, maybe this one could even ping the sIBL archive...
Which reminds me, Matt Estela has just published a tutorial screencast, demonstrating the awesomeness of lighting a scene with Smart IBL. My favorite quote is "From zero to hero in one click." - I'm gonna have to use this :)