HDR Photography

    HDR photography, HDR stands for high dynamic range.  The human eye has an incredible ability to adapt and see different intensities of light than the camera sensor.

     Sometimes we photograph scenes where there are areas that are beyond the capable range of the camera. A good example of this would be the inside of a church. You photograph the inside of the church, and the interior is properly exposed, but the windows where the sunlight is coming in is completely blown out (white and without detail).  This makes your photograph look unappealing.

    An HDR image can correct this, making your photograph look natural as you probably saw it the moment you took the it.

    How do we create an HDR?

First and foremost you need a tripod. The camera must be perfectly still. A strong tripod and head will yield better results.  The camera must be set to auto-bracketing, (bracketing can also be done manually). I like to set it to plus and minus 2 stops along with the correct exposure.    

 

Once you have set the camera. You can also set your drive to continuous shooting. A good cable release or using the self timer is also recommended. Files can be recorded in RAW or JPEG formats. One exposure will be under exposed (dark), one will be correct, and one will be over exposed (light). Some photographers bracket even more exposures of the scene, but three will be OK for most scenes.

Once these photographs are taken, you will have to download them into your PC for post processing. There several programs available for HDR photography. I use Photomatix and it works very well. The program first aligns all images in the sequence, and starts to process them. It starts to works with extreme areas of the photographs (over and under exposed areas), and finds a mid-point where the photographs shows detail where the sensor had trouble exposing properly. This makes a more pleasing, and better balanced photograph.  Does HDR always work? In my opinion no. At times it tends to over saturate the images making them look somewhat unnatural. Photomatix has numerous adjustments to tailor the photograph to your taste. I find the program fun, creative, and some photographs really looking like painting. Hopefully this article will give you a little understanding of HDR photography. please let me know if you have any questions. If I do not know the answer I will look it up, this gives me an opportunity to expand my knowledge. Thanks for reading.  Here are some of my HDR photos. All shot with the Canon 5D mark II, Bogen tripod and head, and Canon 17-40MM-L lens.  The first was a long exposure on the Newport Hotel fishing pier. The second was a run-down shack at Jimbos at the beach. Notice that you can see the inside and outside fairly well. This could not be exposed this way without bracketing of using a flash, which I hate to use because it makes the photograph look unnatural in my opinion.

HDR