A spectacular cathedral

The most beautiful cathedral in Europe in my opinion is the Cathedral of Siena in Tuscany. It is breathtaking. Photography is allowed, but tripods are not. It is quite dark, so that means that the ISO has to be raised. However, I used the new Sigma 14mm f/1.8 lens, and due to the large aperture I was able to use a lower ISO than I otherwise would have given the low illumination level. I shot this at f/1.8 and 1000 ISO on aperture priority and auto white balance (due to the mixture of artificial light and daylight, this gave me the best color). It is a 3-frame HDR composite with 3-f/stop increments between frames. As contrast in a scene increases, you need either more frames making up the HDR sequence or larger f/stop increments between frames. I actually prefer more frames, but since I was hand holding this, I was afraid that the software wouldn’t be able to align 5 or 7 frames. Had I been using a tripod, I would have opted for a 7-frame HDR composite. Note that you can hand hold an HDR sequence only when using a wide angle lens, and the wider the better. When a telephoto lens is used, movement is magnified and for this you definitely need a tripod.