HDR Photography - How to?

[Woza]

Hi guys,

Since seeing a couple of HDR examples its got me eager to try it out for myself, can anyone point me in the right direction of some good tutorials?

Will i need photoshop for post processing or is it achievable with other programs?

Thanks,

Woza.

[RobDickinson]

Photoshop does it, IMO CS2 not very well havnt tried CS4.

I use photomatix, theres a demo on their website.

[jon-]

Essentials needed:

Tripod or something hard to steady your camera.
A camera that will do bracketed shots (-2 0 and +2)
Preferably a remote shutter release cable / remote

Once you've the basic it's as simple as shooting off the 3 photos in quick succession, importing into photomatrix and tweaking a few of the bits.

[RobDickinson]

jon- said:

Essentials needed:

Tripod or something hard to steady your camera.
A camera that will do bracketed shots (-2 0 and +2)
Preferably a remote shutter release cable / remote

Once you've the basic it's as simple as shooting off the 3 photos in quick succession, importing into photomatrix and tweaking a few of the bits.

Dont need bracketing at all - it just helps to get a 3 shot spread.

Manual mode meeter for the scene as a mid range shot and shoot shots 1 stop below/above and continue untill you've covered all the dynamic range. More spread/shots will give you a better hdr.

[jon-]

RobDickinson said:

jon- said:

Essentials needed:

Tripod or something hard to steady your camera.
A camera that will do bracketed shots (-2 0 and +2)
Preferably a remote shutter release cable / remote

Once you've the basic it's as simple as shooting off the 3 photos in quick succession, importing into photomatrix and tweaking a few of the bits.

Dont need bracketing at all - it just helps to get a 3 shot spread.

Manual mode meeter for the scene as a mid range shot and shoot shots 1 stop below/above and continue untill you've covered all the dynamic range. More spread/shots will give you a better hdr.

If you've got fat fingers like me auto-bracketing helps no end. Photomatrix is only so good at aligning the source images

[RobDickinson]

True, mate has a D300 and it can do fast burst with 9 shots spread over +-5EV or something.. talk about making things easy.

[jon-]

RobDickinson said:

True, mate has a D300 and it can do fast burst with 9 shots spread over +-5EV or something.. talk about making things easy.

I was playing with a d300 over the weekend, nice bit of kit. My 400d can only do 3 shots +-2ev but I find even that gets good results.

[Scraggles]

saw a camera that does HD photos, maybe that is the way to go ?

[GetCarter]

I tried the same shot using 9 bracketed frames and 3... IMHO the 9 wasn't any better.

[jon-]

Scraggles said:

saw a camera that does HD photos, maybe that is the way to go ?

HD being high definition or high dynamic range? 2 very different things, I've not heard of a camera with built in HDR.

[RobDickinson]

Probably down to the scene I guess and its dynamic range - I more often shoot 3 shots bracketed just for convinience anyhow.

Friend bought a book on HDR and it was talking about covering the whole range in 1/3rd EV shots...

[baz7175]

I tend to shoot around 7 images of the scene when doing HDR and then choose whether to use 3 or more of them at a later date...most I've ever used was 11 in one image (very very dark image of a river scene).

The number of shots needed will all depend on the spread of light in the scene from dark to light - if there is a massive spectrum of lights available in the shot and you want to be able to achieve a nice level from all of them without any being too dark or too blown then more is better.

[...Mole...]

I use about 7 or 9 exposures nowadays, use Photomatix to create the HDR image, tweak the Tone Mapping to how i like it. Then take it into Photoshop for further editing and noise reduction.

The results ive had in the past using Photoshop to create the HDR image have been pretty poor, but maybe i just didnt persist enough

here's a recent one of mine.

[Woza]

mole....^^^that picture is stunning.

So can someone explain what the bracketing shots is?

Im very new to this, have just bought a Sony DSLR A200, hoping it can do this as i think the results of the hdr stuff look the business as the above picture proves!!

Thanks again,

Woza.

[Simpo Two]

Woza said:

So can someone explain what the bracketing shots is?

Bracketing shots (bracketing exposures really) means you take a series of photographs of the same subject at a range of different exposures: one 'correct', one or more under and one or more over. I often do this manually (using the +/- EV control) to make sure there's at least one that's correct. Many DSLRs have an 'autobracketing' feature whereby you set the parameters and then just fire away - although you can get the sequence in a mess and it's also annoying if you forget to switch it off.

If you plan to combine/overlay the images (eg HDR) then obviously the camera and subject must be fixed.

[Woza]

Simpo Two said:

Woza said:

So can someone explain what the bracketing shots is?

Bracketing shots (bracketing exposures really) means you take a series of photographs of the same subject at a range of different exposures: one 'correct', one or more under and one or more over. I often do this manually (using the +/- EV control) to make sure there's at least one that's correct. Many DSLRs have an 'autobracketing' feature whereby you set the parameters and then just fire away - although you can get the sequence in a mess and it's also annoying if you forget to switch it off.

If you plan to combine/overlay the images (eg HDR) then obviously the camera and subject must be fixed.

ok so think i just need to set a subject and take 3 different pictures at different settings?

will need to study my a200 guide for details of how to change the bracketing!

Thanks Simpo Two

[FM]

I was blown away recently by some of the HDR work on flickr...

[Woza]

I too am blown away by these - agreed they wont be to everyones tastes but i think they look fantastic!

Found this after a web search: http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19...
nice simple guide, all i need to do is change the shutter speed....didn't realise it was so easy!

I guess the question now is are there any good programs that i can get for free rather than paying the hefty sum for photoshop or photopix??

Woza.

[GetCarter]

Woza said:

I too am blown away by these - agreed they wont be to everyones tastes but i think they look fantastic!

Found this after a web search: http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19...
nice simple guide, all i need to do is change the shutter speed....didn't realise it was so easy!

I guess the question now is are there any good programs that i can get for free rather than paying the hefty sum for photoshop or photopix??

Woza.

Photomatix will give you a fully functiong free download (so you can test it and mess around as much as you like... but the output has a watermark added until you pay $99

[kman]

very good tutorial here:

http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr_tutorial/