It is Sunday night and I am on the train from Carinthia to Vienna. This image is from yesterday early afternoon. It’s a manual blend of four exposures. Neither Photomatix Pro now Photoshop CS3’s built-in “Merge to HDR” brought usable results, while I’m quite satisfied with with my manual solution.
This is the kind of image that will produce ghosts and flares with about every lens on the planet. I like best how Sigma lenses behave under these conditions (producing a tiny emerald/blue spark), but the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC is not particularly bad either. In this case I have used the big spark as a major element of the image. In other cases I might have cloned it out.
The Song of the Day is “Sun Zoom Spark” from the 1972 Captain Beefheart album “Clear Spot”. Hear it on YouTube.