HDR or High Dynamic Range
The human eye has a far greater dynamic range than even the best camera sensor. This is why you can look at a room with a poorly lit corner and a window and make out both what is outside the window and in the corner, where a camera may render both the window too bright and the corner too dark. HDR photography is using multiple frames to get an exposure the camera is incapable of getting natively. Used right, you can get amazing pictures of difficult subjects where the darks are still viewable and the lights are not blown out. Used incorrectly and you get what is best described as a vomit of colour. I will experiment in both techniques :)
Yeah, my first time was really boring, but you get the idea.
This next HDR could have (should have?) stopped at the 4th picture below, but I wanted to give it a more dynamic sky. You can tell by the over-exposed shot that the sky was more ordinary looking than that, but I like it.
This next HDR could have (should have?) stopped at the 4th picture below, but I wanted to give it a more dynamic sky. You can tell by the over-exposed shot that the sky was more ordinary looking than that, but I like it.
So, everything in these experimental pages will be (at least for now) a learning experience. In these next photos, I shot a 160+ megapixel panoramic image in a series of 45 overlapping frames. Because this is more or less old hat for me (to varying degrees of success), I decided to bracket all 45 frames +/- 2 stops (hence posting under HDR) for a total of 135 frames. This is a convenient number, as it is about the maximum capacity of my 512MB CF card.
I used the most realistic HDR preset I could that didn't look exactly like the original picture, but as you can see, it's no better than the original - if anything, the trees look fake.
So, here's the prognosis: With HDR you are either correcting a problem or you are creating a problem.
So, here's the prognosis: With HDR you are either correcting a problem or you are creating a problem.
Miscellaneous HDR images: