Drawing with light.

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Danny

Light-graphics

Drawing with light – or actually with a flashlight can provide some amazing images.

I did some experiments with a very simple setup. I hung a Ledlenser 3 LED flashlight from the ceiling using a length of cord. I mounted my camera on a tripod with the lens pointing straight up and exactly in line with the hanging flashlight. I darkened the room, turned on the flashlight and gave it a show so that it started swinging and then used the ‘bulb’ setting to make a 30 second exposure of the swinging light.

Ok, that sounds simple. And so it is, even though there are several variables that have influence on the final result.

The pictures were taken with my Nikon D300.

Camera settings. I used almost the same settings for all the shots, the only variable being the length of exposure. The lens was the 18-200 set to 18 mm or the 14-24 set to 14mm and I set the camera to its lowest ISO setting and closed down the lens to f22. Exposure mode was set to Manual and the exposure time to ‘bulb’. Focus was set to manual and about 10% more than the distance from the lens to the hanging flashlight.

Single swirl

The important variables with the most impact on the final result in this set up are the length of the pendulum cord, the weight of the flashlight and the distance between the flashlight and the lens. The type of flashlight also makes a difference. I got good results with multi-LED lights and not so good with single LED ones even if the single LED was very strong.

The initial direction and strength of the push I gave the flashlight were of course also a factor but I always gave the light a few swings of time to settle its motion into a regular pattern before I pressed the remote to release the shutter.

I used Lightroom to slightly tweak the above picture. By just using the White Balance and Clarity sliders in Lightroom 4 you can achieve beautiful results.

Here two variations of the above image with different slider settings:

Blue

Red

You can take this one step further by combining several copies of a swirl pattern (or different patterns) in Photoshop. Put each pattern on its own layer. Use Free Transform to resize and rotate the layers and play around with various blend modes and opacity settings. Here two examples (see also the top picture in this post):

Using the same swirl pattern

Different swirl patterns

I also tried using more than one flashlight. I cut a rectangular board of styrofoam about 40cm * 10cm * 2cm and stuck 4 pencil lights in a row thru the board. I then attached a piece of cord to each end of the board and hung this from the ceiling. This contraption added a dimension to the movement. In addition to just swirling the whole contraption around I could add a spin around the vertical axis. I may expand on this later after doing some more work as the current results don’t look pretty

One thing that produced nice results was simply taping two different lights together. For this I used 2 nice lights, which have a ring of 8 LEDs surrounding a red laser. You can turn on either the 8 LEDs or the laser. I taped them together by winding some gaffer tape around them, switched on the LEDs in one and the laser in the other. Here a few examples of the results (click any image to enlarge):

Two lights taped together

Following are a few examples of what you can do with the swirls in combination with other images:

True face

Gemini

The tree monkey

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Danny

Well not really a monkey even though many a monkey could be jealous of how Erez scampers up the tree with the chain saw hitched to his belt.

Up in the trees. Click to enlarge image.

Recently I had the opportunity to photograph Erez Kaplan – a tree care professional – and his crew at work. (Click on any picture to enlarge it). Click here to see more pictures.

Climbing

First the saw has to be sharpened.

Sharpening the saw

Then you gear up

Gearing up

Checking the ropes

Gear

and up you go.

Going up

Tying the catch line to a branch

Then you start the cutting.

Cutting

Cutting2

Swinging to another tree

Swinging

Cutting3

While Erez was up the tree, I had a chat with his assistant

and when I happened to mention that I was born in Finland his eyes light up and he said that his mother was also from there. It turned out that I knew his grandfather – we had been to ski-camp together a few times. Small world

Telling tall stories during the coffee break

Telling stories

Finishing and cleaning up

Finishing up

If you need the services of Erez you can contact him here: k.gizum@gmail.com

Click here to see more pictures.

The out of the blue Leica M9

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Danny

A friend of mine announced out of the blue that he has indulged in buying a Leica M9.

leica-m9-summilux-m-35mm

I am a techno-freak since I was a kid, and a Leica was something you dreamt about but didn’t really think you could actually have. It was like the top of the top, the ultimate creation of high-quality technology and out of reach for us mere mortals.

I told my friend that I had to see it! The next day, when I got into the office, there it was – sitting on a stack of papers on my desk.

I don’t know what it is about this camera and I don’t have the correct words to describe it but it radiates strength, beauty and competence. I just stood there looking at it, turning the stack of papers to be able to see it from all sides.

Finally I dared to pick it up. It felt exactly right, heavy enough – slightly under 1 kg with the 35mm Summilux-M f1.4 lens – and nicely balanced. The controls are all well placed and a mixture of retro and modern digital. The view finder with the manual focus optical rangefinder sent me a few decades back along memory lane to my Kodak Retina IIIc. Just then my friend entered the office. He told me to take the camera for a spin on the lunch break. He must have noticed my dreamy expression

So instead of going to the restaurant for lunch, I took the camera, bought a sandwich and drove up a mountain road and went for a walk to shoot some pictures.

I didn’t photograph anything special, just the landscape around me. I also made some series of 5 bracketed shots for HDR. All pictures were taken in RAW mode.

The manual rangefinder focusing appears to have something in common with riding a bicycle – when you once learn it you don’t forget it. After 5 minutes I had forgotten all about auto-focus, 11 or 51 focus points and low-light focusing problems – the camera seemed to focus almost by itself, quickly and accurately.

When I got back to the office I used LightRoom 4 beta to transfer the images to my computer. I went quickly through the imported images and the first thing that struck me was how incredibly sharp the images were. I later showed a few of them to my wife and the first thing she said – look how sharp they are (she didn’t know that they were not taken with my usual gear). I’m mostly using the Nikon D3s with professional Nikon lenses so the technical quality of the pictures is high but the Leica images are definitely one level higher !

OK, so here a few examples:

I recommend that you click on the image to see it in full size.

This image was slightly adjusted in LightRoom.

Slightly adjusted in LightRoom - no cropping. Click to view full size image.

The following picture is a panorama of the same area, combined from 3 HDR images made of 5 bracketed shots each.

Panorama combined from 3 HDR shots. Click to enlarge.

Here a slightly cropped landscape shot.

The next picture was taken earlier by my friend. The reason that I bring it here is so that you can see the Moiré effect I noticed on the fences close to the ridge of the mountain. I used LightRoom 4 to clean it up on the right side but on the left it is clearly visible if you click on the image and enlarge it.

See the Moiré on the left-most snow fences.

With the Nikon you don’t have this problem as the sensor of the Nikon D3s has a filter, which removes this kind of Moiré. The flip side of the coin is, that the images are slightly less sharp.

The new Nikon D800 (36 Mpix) comes in 2 flavours, D800 and D800E. The difference between them is that in the D800E this filter is removed (or actually neutralized) in order to achieve maximum sharpness.

With the B+W 1000x into the sunset.

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Danny

Yesterday I decided to experiment with the B+W ND 3.0 1000x neutral density filter by photographing the sunset on the Tel Aviv beach.

I called my friend Reuven and we set off with wifes and dog for a stroll on the beach promenade. The idea was to have a nice walk, a beer and shoot the sunset

The B+W ND 3.0 reduces the light by 10 f stops, that is, it allows only 0.001 of the light through. So why would I use such a filter to photograph a sunset ?

Two reasons.

I wanted to give the sea a silky look by blurring the waves with a long exposure.
You have a better control of the exposure than without the filter.

The waves were smaller than I expected yesterday but the sea still got a nice look for the 15-30 sec exposures.

The problem with such dense filters is that when you screw it on the lens you hardly see anything through the view-finder. When you shoot into the sun, you see the sun but if you shoot something else you don’t really see enough to frame and focus your shot. What most people do is to first frame and focus and only then mount the filter. I found a more convenient way. I activated the LiveView mode and on the LCD I had a much brighter picture than in the view-finder.

Reuven took a picture of me shooting the sunset

The sun went down at 17:15 local time. It happens very fast. From the moment the sun touches the horizon it takes less than 3 minutes for it to totally vanish below.

Silhouettes against the sun

The above picture was taken still without the filter ISO 500 f5.3 1/8000 sec.

The shot below was shot with the filter mounted at ISO 200 f27 15.0 sec.

Fisherman silhouette against the sunset on the Tel Aviv beach

All pictures with the filter were taken in Manual mode with the camera on a tripod.

I had to do a few test shots to get the exposure right.

Ghosts can be a problem with long exposures. In the picture below the fisherman stood still for just a few seconds and then started moving around. You can also see another ghost who walked across the picture and stopped for a few seconds to admire the sunset.

Ghosts in the picture

On the other hand, this ’feature’ can com in very handy. In the picture below the beach looks pretty empty. Actually there were quite a few people strolling around but because they were in constant movement they aren’t at all visible in the picture.

Tel Aviv beach after the sunset. ISO 200 f5.6 30.0 sec

Here a few more examples of the actual sunset.

The setting sun. ISO 200 f9.5 15.0 sec

Sun setting on the sea with deep red sky

Why I want the Nikon D4

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Danny

There’s a new kid on the block – Nikon has announced the Nikon D4, the replacement for the D3s – my current main camera.

http://www.dpreview.com/products/nikon/slrs/nikon_d4

I don’t take photographs for a living, I live to take photographs. There may be a few other things to live for also but photography is for me definitely up there and intermixed with everything else I do. Friends and family are so used to see me with the camera in my hand that they point out that I’m not fully dressed if I turn up without one.

I’m partial to big and heavy cameras. I find it easier to hold the camera steady when I’m grasping something solid and hefty.

I’ve been using Nikons since 1962 and I still have my first one, the Nikon F Photomic with 50mm f1.4 and 135mm lenses – and it still works

In the analog era you could stay with a camera for many years. New models came out but the changes, improvements and new features didn’t make such a big difference. Many of the new things were not related to the kind of photography I did and the quality of the final image was still dependant on your skill as photographer to set the correct exposure and focus, the quality of your lens, having the correct kind and speed of film in your camera and the lab doing the development of the prints – if you didn’t do also that by yourself.

I used the Nikon F untill 1988 when Nikon announced the F4. The F4 was the first Nikon SLR with autofocus as well as the first professional Nikon to use a vertical-travel metal-blade shutter constructed to minimize noise and camera bounce. With the MB-21 battery pack it was a hefty piece of work to carry around but, like I already said, heavy keeps them steady.

I had the Nikon F4 untill 2004 when I decided to go fully digital with the 6.1 MP Nikon D70 and this is when the problems started.

I have owned and used 3 main cameras between 1958 and 2004 (Kodak Retina IIIc, Nikon F Photomic, Nikon F4). In the last8 years, since 2004 I have had another 4 and now going to the 5th. There was the D70 (sold), D200 (sold), D300 (still there), the current D3S (on sale) and the up and coming D4.

Three cameras in 46 years and then four cameras in 8 years……. Why? “Because they are there” as the mountaineer answered when asked why he climbs mountains ? No, not because they are there and not because each one sprouts new gimmicks and featurse galore of which I maybe use a third. The real and compelling reason for me is that each one uses a new and improved film that gives better quality pictures. Oops, did I say film? Well, in the analog era Kodak, Agfa or Fuji would come up with a new emulsion and you threaded that into your proven work-horse and rode of into the sunset hopefully shooting better pictures. ( I grew up with the yellow boxes of film and darkroom supplies from Kodak who has now, sadly, filed for Chapter 11.).

With the introduction of the digital camera, the film = sensor and software, are built in, so when there is a new and better ‘film’ you have to change the whole rig. When I say better I’m not talking only about mega pixels. The megapixel race is not so important as it was in the beginning of the digital era when the manufacturers had a hard time trying to match the resolution of the 35mm film with a digital sensor. A 36*24mm (FX in digital) frame of ISO 100 film is equivalent with 4-16 megapixel depending on the type of film. So the sufficient amount of pixels is there. Today it’s more a question of the ‘quality’ of the pixels. When you make a bigger sensor without increasing the number of pixels you can enlarge the size of the pixels or photosites as they are called and in this case less is definitely more. The D3s has 12.1 MP and the D3x has 24.5 MP on the same size of sensor. I chose the D3s because of the unsurpassed (untill now) quality of the low-light photography it allowed. It had my favourite film built in :). Of course the number of mega pixels is still important but the ratio of the number and the density has to be right for the kind of work you do.

With the D4, Nikon has managed to up the megapixel count with about 30% to 16.2 while also expanding the ISO range. The reworked focusing system is faster and works with less light – good for low-light photography or lenses with smaller apertures. Of course there are a lot of other goodies as well but nothing really dramatic. Maybe I’ll even start shooting video clips with new video capabilities of the D4.

So I’m going to change to the new film when it is available at the end of February and I’ll let you know if it was worth it.
Here a link to an amazing video shot completely with the Nikon D4.

The Nikon V1 – First impressions – continued

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Danny

I received the 10mm f2.8 lens and the SB-N5 small speedlight. I got the yellow Nikon warranty slip for both of them but the SB-N5 doesn’t have a number and you can’t register it on the Nikon site, like all the other gear I have bought.

The speedlight is a nifty little thing with a head that swivels 360 deg horizontal and 90 deg vertical.

Nikon V1 with mounted flash SB-N5

It’s small and light as there is no battery. It draws it’s power from the camera. It came with a pouch and a small plastic protector for the hot-shoe. To attach the flash to the camera you have to remove the cover of accessory port – which, as I already said, will probably get lost….

I exchanged the 10-30mm zoom for the 10mm fixed lens and – voilà, the camera became more ‘pocketable’, at the expense of a zoom but with the gain of an f2.8 lens, which is excellent for street photography in less than ideal light conditions.

Nikon V1 with 10mm f2.8 lens

Nikon 1 10-30mm and 10mm

We are off for a few days in Vienna and hope to get some good shots there also with the V1.

———————————————————

Back from Vienna. We had a lovely time. We saw some nice exhibitions including a photo exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson, which was just fantastic.

www.kunsthauswien.com

I had two interesting mails waiting for me, one from Nikon announcing and other firmware upgrade for the V1 and another from Adobe announcing an upgrade to ACR and Lightroom with support for the Nikon V1. I quickly installed both.

I haven’t yet taken any real pictures with the flash but here some examples of other pictures – click the picture to enlarge it:

Playing Dominos on a sunny December day on the Tel-Aviv beach	Bella - our dog
Nikon V1 with 10mm lens set at f2.8 1/30 ISO 500	Nikon V1 with 10mm lens set at f2.8 1/60 ISO 200
Nikon V1 10mm f2.8 1/60 ISO 320	Bellevue gardens in Vienna in December. Nikon V1 10mm f4.5 1/125 ISO 160
Christmas market. V1 10mm f2.8 1/125 ISO 100
In the shopping mall. V1 10mm f2.8 1/60 ISO 200	Shopping mall

The Nikon V1 – First impressions – compared with my Olympus XZ-1 – continued-2

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Danny

Continued from

22 Nov. 2011

Yesterday was a day full of goodies

First I got a mail from Nikon support announcing a firmware upgrade for the Nikon 1 lenses, including the 10-30 mm that I have.

Then I found out that Adobe Labs have made available a release candidate for Lightroom 3.6 and Adobe Camera Raw 6.6, both of which include support for the Nikon 1 cameras. I downloaded both and installed them and they work just fine.

It’s a relief, to be able to open the V1 images in LightRoom. Not that I want to bad-mouth other software packages but there’s nothing like LightRoom for speed and convenience. This version includes a lens correction profile for the 10-30 mm, which nicely corrects the slight barrel distortion of the lens. You don’t really notice the distortion (at least not in landscape shots), but after the correction the picture looks better

Here an example of a street shot where the distortion is more pronounced:

Winterthur - uncorrected

Winterthur - corrected

To be continued….

1000X ND NeutralDensity Filter

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Danny

I recently acquired a B+W ND 3.0 1000x neutral density filter. This filter lengthens the necessary exposure time by a factor of 1000. In clear text this means that if the correct exposure time without the filter is 1/100 sec, then with the filter you need to expose for 10 sec.

In practise, this filters allows me to use exposure times of up to 30 seconds when taking pictures outside in full daylight.

When I told a friend of mine about this, he asked me: You shell out big bucks for a Nikon D3s so that you can shoot handheld practically in the dark and then you muzzle it with 1000x ND filter. You crazy or what?

No, I’m not crazy, I just like experimenting.

I have seen beautiful shots of waterfalls, the seashore and other landscapes, where the water is kind of silky and misty smooth. For this you need looong exposures.

The grand Rheinfallen in Schaffhausen, a 20 minute drive from where I live, should be a good testing ground, so that’s where I headed at the first opportunity with my camera, tripod and the filter.

It was in the morning and the sun was partly obscured by the morning fog.

I set the exposure parameters for ISO 200 and used f stops of 8-22 and exposure times of 10-30 seconds and bracketed the shots.

I definitely haven’t yet perfected the technique but here a few examples of what I have until now.

Small waterfall. ISO 200 f/8 15 sec

Rheinfallen. ISO 200 f/8 15 seconds

After the Rheinfallen. ISO 200 f/11 15 sec.

Rheinfallen

More to come

The Nikon V1 – First impressions – compared with my Olympus XZ-1 – continued

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Danny

Continued from.

I read some Nikon V1 reviews in various photo magazines and they made a few points I haven’t said anything about.

Notably they praised the fast focusing of the Nikon J1 and V1 practically confirming Nikon’s claim that they are the fastest focusing cameras of this type in the world .

Why didn’t I mention it? Well, when I pick up a sophisticated and pretty expensive piece of equipment with the Nikon logo on it, I really don’t expect anything less!

I expect to be able to point the camera at my subject, frame the image and shoot without any annoying delays because of focusing or other reasons. I may of course also be spoilt by the performance of the D3s and therefore take things like that for granted.

I am writing about my subjective perception of the performance of the camera – that is – does it do what I want and expect it to do for me. I write down everything I don’t like about it or which doesn’t perform up to my expectations. I may omit to praise some good features because they just do what they are supposed to do and perform the way I expect.

Many of the new and unique features of the V1 are software related and require a strong CPU and processing engine at that is exactly what the Nikon engineers have built into it. This probably is the cause for the battery only lasting for about 400 pictures as opposed to the same battery lasting for over 1000 shots on the D7000.

I’m still waiting for the Adobe RAW update which includes the V1 NEF.

Here a few pictures I shot at night in Yafo. Click the images to enlarge.

Alley in old Yafo

Wall in old city of Yafo at night	Workshop

Continued here

The Nikon V1 – First impressions – compared with my Olympus XZ-1

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Danny

continued from here

I received the Nikon V1 yesterday evening. It’s definitely bigger than my Olympus XZ-1, which it’s replacing. The Olympus weighs 304 gr with the attached view-finder and the Nikon exactly 500 gr with the 10-30 mm lens.

Nikon V1 and Olympus XZ-1 with retracted lenses.

As you can see in the above picture, the view-finder on the XZ-1 protrudes in the back whereas the lens of the V1 juts out in front so the front to back size is not that much different. Of course, if you remove the XZ-1 view-finder then the Olympus is really much smaller. On the other hand, you can also exchange the V1 10-30mm f3.5-5.6 for the 10mm f2.8, which is about the size of the non-interchangeable lens on the Olympus.

Anyway, half a kilo of pure muscle – that’s the feeling you have when you pick up the V1.

Nikon V1 and Olympus XZ-1 with fully extended zooms

I’m not sure that it is fair or correct to compare the V1 and the XZ-1 but after writing how satisfied I was with the XZ-1 (see my posts on the XZ-1) I want to explain/justify the move to the V1 (at least to myself) if I can.

The 4 most important criteria for selecting the XZ-1 were:

Pocketable
Shoots RAW
OLED screen or view-finder
Fast lens

Well, after adding the external view-finder to the XZ-1 you needed a big pocket….

With the Nikon, not all criteria were met. The pocket has to be very big and the lens isn’t as fast but then there are other specs, which at least on the paper outweigh the ‘missing’ features.

The most compelling reasons for me to get the V1 were:

Bigger sensor - This is a new CX size sensor. With 13.2*8.8 mm it is about 2.5 times the size of the XZ-1 sensor but still only about a 1/3 of the DX size sensor. At the same MegaPixel count this should provide lower noise pictures especially in bad lightning conditions and higher ISO settings. The CX sensor has a multiplying factor of 2.7 so the 10-30mm lens that I have, is the equivalent of 27-81mm in 35mm (FX) format.

RAW format.

Interchangeable lenses. Nikon came out with a new series of 1 Nikkor lenses. Using the (not yet available) FT1 Mount Adaptor, you can attach any F mount Nikon lens to the V1. If I would put my 70-200mm on the V1 it would become a 190-540mm. Another question is, why would I do that? One reason would be that when you take a picture of a faraway subject, then a 10 MP image with the 540mm on the V1 would maybe give a better result than a cropped image taken with 200mm on the D3s. The D3s has a 12.1 MP sensor and after cropping to the same view as on the V1, you are left with less than the half…

Nikon V1 and Olympus XZ-1 with fully extended zooms

The buttons, menus and most functions are familiar and pretty intuitive to any Nikon user. However, there are some new options, especially in the movie domain and it makes sense to read the manual in order to be able to fully utilize these. More about that later.

I charged the battery – a EN-EL15, the same as the D7000 is using. It’s a pretty powerful battery. The drawback is that I now have one more Nikon charger – one for the V1 another for the D300 and a third for the D3s. My wife’s P6000 charges the batteries on board with a USB connected power supply.

I put the charged battery and a memory card into the V1 and shot a few pictures – just to feel how the camera handles. I removed the card and put it in the SD slot of my notebook, fired up Lightroom and clicked on import. Surprise surprise, Adobe doesn’t yet support the Nikon V1 brand of NEF (RAW) files. I installed the Nikon ViewNX2 supplied with the V1.

BTW – I wonder how this camera is selling in the UK – or maybe the younger crowd don’t see anything strange in the name V1….lensesNikon V1 and Olympus XZ-1 with fully extended zooms.Nikon V1 and Olympus XZ-1 with fully extended zooms

Here a few pictures I shot later in the day.

I’m shooting in RAW and the quality of the images is excellent. I don’t have to reduce noise because there is almost nothing to remove. If you read my posts on the XZ-1 you may remember that there you have to do pretty strong noise removal for each image.

Today I went out with the two cameras to shoot some comparison images.

The form factor is slightly different. The V1 image is 3872*2592 pixels, which has an aspect ratio of approximately 3:2.

The ZX-1 image is 3648*2736 so the aspect ratio is about 4:3.

The comparison images were shot in aperture priority mode with approximately the same settings on both cameras. The purpose of the comparison is just to get a feel for the differences in the handling and the images.

Here a few examples:

(Click the sample images to enlarge.)

In Winterthur with the Nikon V1.	In Winterthur with the Olympus XZ-1
Detail from the two images above. Nikon on the left and Olympus on the right.

In the 200% enlargement above you can see that the Olympus image is much noisier.

Here some more images.

Trees Nikon V1	Trees Olympus XZ-1
Pond with Nikon V1	Pond with Olympus XZ-1

Handling.

I haven’t used all the functions of the Nikon yet but here my first impressions.

First the gripes:

The lens cap and the cover of the accessory port will get lost.

If you put the camera in your pocket or in a bag or lay it down somewhere – be sure to check the position of the mode dial when you retrieve it. The position of the dial shifts very easily when it touches something, so when you press the shutter you may find yourself in the Motion Snapshot mode instead of the Still image mode (or vice versa).

When you are in the Still Image or Smart Photo Selector modes, the camera shows after each shot a 3-4 second review of the just taken image. You cannot turn off this ‘feature’. It’s very irritating because usually I immediately want to be able to see and plan my next shot.

The Electronic Viewfinder on the XZ-1 is much brighter.

The EN-EL15 battery of the V1 is rated at 400 images. This is not bad, but the same battery on the D7000 is rated at 1050 !!!

There is no option for automatically bracketed shots. This is a real disappointment for me as I do a lot of HDR photography and even the XZ-1 could do 3 bracketed shots.

Some important options are only accessible through the menus instead of having a button or a selection dial. For example the Exposure Mode: P,S,A,M,Scene.

And now for some flowers:

The view-finder has a nifty sensor so that when you put your eye to it, the camera automatically switches from the screen to the view-finder. On the XZ-1 I had to press a small button on the EVF to activate/deactivate it.

The image quality is in a league above the Olympus. This is definitely because of the bigger sensor.

The buttons and dials are conveniently placed and easy to use. The multiselector dial is good. You can press it up, down, left and right and it also has a wheel around it, which you can turn in either direction. The wheel is pretty sensitive but after you get used to it, it is really convenient.

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As I mentioned above, there is no automatic bracketing option. However, by using the multiselector button and wheel you can quickly change the exposure compensation, without removing the camera from you eye, and take as many bracketed shots as you like.

You can also almost eliminate the 3-4 second review by immediately pressing down the shutter to the half-way point.

Here a few examples of HDR images created from 3 shots each.: