First try with HDR.

I have my new Nikon DSLR now and have been having a lot of fun playing with it.
There are only a couple of things it lacks which is a shame.
Auto bracketing and depth of field preview. To be honest I would have probably gone for the next one up had I known about the lack of DOFP.
The bracketing is something anyone into photography would have done many times but manually. And of course it can still be done that way. The advantage of the auto bracketing is for HDR photography. (High Dynamic Range)
This is a relatively new technique which uses 3 or more exposures and puts them all together in one image.
The basic idea is that you take a number of shots all at different exposures. So one properly exposed and then one or two each way +1 +2 and -1 -2 stops.
This allows the camera to get detail from every tonal range. Lots of shadow detail and lots of highlight detail as well.
The problem without AEB is that you need to touch the camera to change the shutter or exposure compensation between shots. This can move the thing and also allows clouds etc to move in the frame which will prevent your shots from lining up properly for the final shot.

Now there is a clever way to make a semi HDR out of a single RAW image!
This Is what I have done with the image below. It is not a true HDR but you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. And unless anyone wants to buy me a better Nikon body its the best I can do for you for now.
Hope you like it.

Larger version here on Flikr.