Here’s what I did: I told the camera to underexpose a bit (nearly one stop’s worth), and then I set up the “Auto Exposure Balance” – what this does is take a photo, underexpose it by X amount (you set this) and overexpose it by X amount (same X).
According to the manual, this is made for exposures where you want to compare several exposure options and choose the best. When you’re using a progam like Picasa, which “fixes” all of this for you, it’s near moot. However, if you look at the raw files as they originally came out (ufraw, Paint Shop Pro, etc.), you’ll see a definite difference.
Now, for the (potentially) nifty part.
I didn’t do anything dramatic, but I did this with the intention of playing with HDR imaging. Apparently HDR uses several images to help (potentially) make an image closer to what the eye perceives, among other things. The linked Wikipedia article above explains it better than I.
Oh, and what does it do?
Here’s the mid-range image:
and the HDR:
A similar effect can be achieved by fiddling with the color and brightness controls, but that may lead to excess fiddling and we all know what that gets you. It can theoretically be applied to multiple images, but dealing with more than the three that the camera will take (on a tripod) may pose a minor issue. I guess it’s one more thing to experiment with.
