Many thanks, John

We stay in one of the self catering cottages, which, if you have a family group and chose the right size, don't really work out that much more than some holiday caravans. Also look out for their special offers, they often do 3-night stays at reduced rates. Good luck.

Best regards
Peter

Many thanks, Stuart

They even had a Welsh male voice choir singing there on the Sunday afternoon !

Best regards
Peter

Hi Mike. I tried to be selective in the shots I posted here (to prevent the thread posting from being too long). The main point of the lighting is for the benefit of the residents but there are also many other floodlit features. Overall the effect was very attractive and magical.
To get a true impression I'm afraid you will just have to stay there and see for yourself !

The other reason I posted this thread was to illustrate the power of the Night Scene HDR mode that I'd not come across before.
To illustrate this I'll now include one of my attempts from the night before using 1/15s on Tv. As with the original HDR shots this is also an unedited camera jpg. I think you will see the difference in light capture ?

Peter

Many thanks, Mike.
I've posted a couple of shots, slightly sharpened in PSE11, on the gallery, for comparison.

Thanks again
Peter
PS: My first new car was an HAH21 Viva SL90

When I'm on holiday, travelling light, I find my Sigma 18-250 serves me very well. Whilst most of what I shoot would be covered by my DA18-135WR I find that I often need that extra 'tele' length. I don't have anything wider, so for 'tight spaces' it is one of these two.
But each to his own !

Peter

Many thanks for your kind comments, Gareth and Bill.

I was really pleased by the way that Night Scene HDR mode handled the difficult light conditions.

Thanks again
Peter

Just checked my K70 settings, Philip, and the HDR settings on Menu 3 are 'greyed out' when on Night Scene HDR mode. The manual says this uses Auto HDR but doesn't say anything about Auto Align.

Checking the camera HDR settings on Menu 3 they are all available in every other mode and other scene settings (and Auto Align appears to be ON by default), so I might experiment with using my own HDR settings on the plain 'Night Scene' mode and see what I get ?

Thanks again
Peter

Thanks for that comment, Philip. The short answer is "NO" because I didn't know that existed !
I'd never used HDR before (nor any of the Scene Modes), but I did notice that on one shot, when I didn't hold the camera still long enough while the 3 shots were fired, the result was badly blurred.

I'll have a look on the Camera Menu to check and also study the Manual before trying again - so thanks again for alerting me.

Best regards
Peter

Many thanks for those kind comments, Nigel.

I've never been one to use the 'Scene Modes' as I'd always felt they were for people who didn't know how to set their own exposures !
How stupidly arrogant of me - I've now learnt my lesson !
On my first wildlife photoshoot after getting my k-r the professional photographer , in reply to someone asking about how to use manual exposure settings, replied "you can either spend a lot of time trying out different settings or simply leave it to those clever Japanese engineers and put the camera on Auto !" How right he was !

I was certainly very pleased by the Night Scene HDR response in balancing the lighting and you are right about the slight softness - after all, my old eyes saw things that way in the dark !

Yes, you do have to stay there to wander around at night - Day Visitors have to leave by 7:30 pm so another of the pleasures of staying there is that it is very quiet and you can frame shots as much as you like. You don't need to be a Noel Coward (who was an early visitor to the Hotel), or Patrick McGoohan (who stayed there before writing 'The Prisoner' after falling in love with the place) as there are a number of the houses available as self catering holiday lets, and we have stayed there with our family several times. They book up very quickly, especially for the school holidays, so our son booked for next year before we left and got the last available week in a house big enough for all of us !
So, NEXT year I WILL take my tripod !

Thanks again
Peter

Portmeirion is a wonderful place by day but becomes magical at night with lots of feature lighting.
When I tried to capture this, hand held, by using Tv and 1/15 to 1/25s I got very 'washed out' results as the lighting overpowered the subject matter.

I found that my wife's Lumix LF1 has a 'Hand Held Night Shot' setting and when we used this it took 3 exposures in rapid succession, which I thought must be an HDR mode ? (And the results were very impressive !)
I then looked for something similar on the K70 and, sure enough, in the Scene mode selection there is one for 'Night Scene HDR' !
I therefore chose this and the results were MUCH better.
There is still a little bit of blur from hand-held 'camera shake', as I didn't have a tripod with me.

I've pasted some of the shots below - all c&c welcome.

NOTE: These are all the Camera JPG's with no PP apart from some straightening and cropping !

However, in future I think I will have to take a tripod !
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Thanks for looking
Peter