Hand Held Bracketing Script - Update

I've slowly been refining my latest, relatively, simple Hand Held Bracketing Script (down load from the right).

This script was developed to allow quick access to the ML Advanced Bracketing (AB) for one specific use case, namely hand holding a wide angle lens in a high dynamic range environment, for example if in a church or cathedral, or if you wish to take some indoor shots.

The latest version respects the AB settings, that is the script will run and reset the AB settings after running. The script will run in LV or non-LV mode, and is agnostic to the AB being on or off. However, the script does switch off the AB after running each bracket sequence.

As I'm not out 'doing photography' at the moment, here is a test bracket sequence I just took with my 5D3 and Rokinon 12mm Fisheye, at F/8: BTW a lens that I find pretty impressive, especially for inside work.

The focus was set at 2*H, for infinity sharpness, ie an infinity blur around 15 microns.

I used ML's ETTR to set the base exposure (but you don't need to use ETTR to set the base exposure), which in this case was 1/100s at ISO 100. I then held the half shutter for just over 3 secs (this is adjustable in the script) and gently released to start the bracket capture, which resulted in a three image bracket set: 1/100s @ ISO 100 + 1/30s @ ISO 100 + 1/30s @ ISO 1600.

The 1/30s was set by the script from the min shutter value I had set in ML's ETTR. The ISO 1600 was my explicit ISO setting in the script, ie I could have set 800 or 3200. The ISO 1600 is, of course, my ISO invariant capture, which guarantees the highest DR capture, ie at the slowest shutter I can tolerate hand holding, ie 1/30s,

The three captures look like this:

 

These were ingested into Lightroom, and, as I captured an ISO invariant image at 1/30s and ISO 1600, I created an additional virtual copy of this image and increased the exposure in LR by 1 stop.

These four images were then processed in LR's HDR Photo Merge, giving me the following base-processed image, after a little LR tweaking in the develop module.

I then did a round trip to Photoshop and processed the above with FisheyeHemi 2, giving me the following final image in LR, after a little bit more tweaking and transformation.

Bottom line: If you ever need quick access to a handheld bracketing, then this script may be of value. As usual I welcome feedback.