HDR, High dynamic range imaging

[Robin]

Quoting Flicker (http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/discuss/40580/):


It stands for High Dynamic Range.

It's a feature in Photoshop CS2 or Photomatix or FDRTools.

It's basically a way to 'digitally develop' your photos using tonal information contained in multiple exposures of the same shot.

Say you exposure bracket the same shot. You can merge all three files into one 32 bit file and use the data contained in the images to create one master output preserving accurate details from all exposures.


To put it in layman's terms. You set your camera up on a tripod and take 3 pictures of the same image, but with different exposures. (ie: light, dark, medium light) and then merge the three images into one.

This guy takes some of the most amazing photos using this process:

http://stuckincustoms.com/index.php

If you have a digital camera, tripod and Photoshop this could be something you can experiment with yourself.

[Barrie]

I've been wanting to play with this process. The photos look so amazing. Here's a flickr group all about HDR (http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/) - some of the photos are just gorgeous!

[Mark]

Here's an HDR shot I took at Rocky Mountain National Park:
http://barbieri.smugmug.com/photos/3244187-M.jpg

[Joe]

That is a great shot Mark. Love that park, it has some really super photo opportunities.
Joe

[WillCAD]

Everybody check the link in Robin's original post!

Today's pic on the StuckInCustoms site just happens to be the a wonderful castle shot in the Magic Kingdom! Looks to me like it was taken from the Tomorrowland Terrace area, where Lou Mongello holds his TriviaFest at MouseFest.

[Frogman]

How fast can you switch the setting to take the other two photos needed? I would assume you have to be pretty fast or clouds and stuff moves...

[AuroraNJ29]

Robin,

That's really neat. Thanks for posting.

[Robin]

How fast can you switch the setting to take the other two photos needed? I would assume you have to be pretty fast or clouds and stuff moves...

I would think you have to click-change-click-change, etc. Some settings on a camera only take a split second to change.

I notice some images must have a slow shutter speed, because the clouds or people have a sort of streak look to them.

I would think the most important thing would be a tripod, or you wouldn't be able to get the exact same angle for each shot.

[Robin]

That's a great shot Mark. Do you tweak the colors making one layer more red, while another might be more blue? There's a subtle exaggerated color look in HDR photos that appeal to me.

[AUBandPilot]

How fast can you switch the setting to take the other two photos needed? I would assume you have to be pretty fast or clouds and stuff moves...

All DSLR (I think), and some P&S, cameras have a feature called AEB (Automatic Exposure Bracketing). This allows you to take a series of photos of differeing exposures with out having to change any settings between photos. Most with this feature will do 3 pics in AEB (and some 5 or more) with plus or minus 1 or 2 stops (with some doing 3 or more).

So, like in the example below I set my camera to AEB +-2 and set to burst mode. All I did was push the shutter and the camera took 3 succesive pics at 3 differnt exposures. All within 1 second or less.

http://byronhall.com/Temp/AEB_Example2.jpg

[Robin]

There is a wiki with a list of various HDR software products. There are a few that are free to non-commercial photographers.

http://wiki.panotools.org/HDR_Software_overview

[Dawick]

Thanks Robin, they're all stunning pics. I'm going to have to give this a go :)