HDR and Luminance - beginners questions

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

I have had a DSLR for a while now (Nikon D80) and am tempted by the lure of HDR. I'm a Linux user, and it seems that the commonly used HDR software for Linux is Luminance. Does anyone on here have any experience with it? It seems very complex and I haven't worked out how to use it yet. I have several sets of bracketed low-light pictures taken on a tripod, which I think are suitable for HDR, but have yet to get any results that are better than the original photos.

Failing that, does anyone know of any good on-line guides to HDR and how to get started with it? Google throws a lot up, but little of it is genuinely helpful.

Thanks,


Oli.

[K12beano]

zcacogp said:

.... am tempted by the lure of HDR. ...

Nurse, more pills to the ward Now!

[zcacogp]

K12beano said:

zcacogp said:

.... am tempted by the lure of HDR. ...

Nurse, more pills to the ward Now!

Too late - I've felt a bit odd since I woke up this morning, and doubt the feeling is going to go away soon ...

Soooo, back to HDR and luminance.


Oli.

[Whitefly Swatter]

check out photomatrix or photoshop they both do HDR

[K12beano]

If you insist...


I reckon RC Concepcion (One of "The Photoshop Guys") is your very best source of information.


http://www.aboutrc.com/blog/2011/04/19/the-hdr-boo...


As to which software for Linux, can't help

[rxtx]

Here's a thread that should inspire you ...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-photography/...

... on what NOT to do with HDR

ETA, The GIMP can do HDR with its HDR plugin. The GIMP is worth learning if you haven't already, it's very good.

http://photoluminary.com/2011/03/gimp-hdr-tutorial...

Edited by rxtx on Thursday 19th January 14:04

[JDRoest]

Cough, use Photomatix here...occasionally. Less so these days.

Set to RAW, 3 shot AEB +/-2 stops for the best results, maybe with exposure compensation down -0.5 stops.

Be warned, if the light is too low you will be in noise hell, and not nice noise hell either. Just bad noise.

If the light is too bright, then you just get washed out images.

Avoid ringing. You'll get it on your early tries, but try to move towards images where you get no ringing. Ringing is the light outline you get between two contrasting colours, usually between details on the ground and the sky. You'll see it on trees and lamp-posts. If the ringing is obvious, consider it a FAIL.

Also, after outputting, bring the photograph into your favourite viewer, and up the contrast a couple of notches. That'll set off the images a bit further. Note that changing contrast in a jpeg and tiff get very different results, so use tiff if you can, until the last moment and slap into jpeg.

Note: the best HDRs are the ones that only the pros can spot

[AndWhyNot]

Sorry OP, am neither an HDRist nor a Linuxer.

JDRoest said:

Set to RAW, 3 shot AEB +/-2 stops for the best results, maybe with exposure compensation down -0.5 stops.

Be warned, if the light is too low you will be in noise hell, and not nice noise hell either. Just bad noise.

If the light is too bright, then you just get washed out images.

Is it not the case that at point of capture you should be looking to retain the highlights and gather data from the shadows with manual metering of both? Seems odd to end up with washed-out highlights and noisy shadows after applying a technique developed to avoid these.

[anonymous-user]

Here's one of my early (and few) HDR attempts.

Sadly there are elements of 'ringing' in it as mentioned above.

It was in quite a dark warehouse, I think it was made from 4 or 5 shots.



Despite the flaws it certainly looks more dramatic than the original.

[markmullen]

With some raw editors you can use selective local adjustments on a raw file to get the benefits of an HDR image without the look, I use Capture One and can paint a section of sky, for example, and give it a stop less, another layer I can brighten by a stop etc. With local adjustments in Capture One they can have different saturation, contrast, exposure, brightness, colour balance, you name it.

[JDRoest]

AndWhyNot said:

Is it not the case that at point of capture you should be looking to retain the highlights and gather data from the shadows with manual metering of both? Seems odd to end up with washed-out highlights and noisy shadows after applying a technique developed to avoid these.

If the light is too bright, then you're upper image becomes far too strong for the overall image, so for instance, the rich blue sky
that you are expecting gets washed away into a pale blue.

One way to work round this is a grad neutral density to pull the sky down a bit in exposure and to add the needed colour. The flip side of that is you end up with an image where the sky is too dark.

The other problem if it's too bright are shadows become too dark. It's very difficult to get the dynamic range to work in your favour with the two extremities.

But if you are away from the two extremes, I think it can be quite rewarding.

[JDRoest]

NinjaPower said:

Here's one of my early (and few) HDR attempts.

Sadly there are elements of 'ringing' in it as mentioned above.

It was in quite a dark warehouse, I think it was made from 4 or 5 shots.



Despite the flaws it certainly looks more dramatic than the original.

Certainly more dramatic than the original. Bit of toning down will get rid of the ringing. However, I never found anything over 3 shots to be worth the extra effort. Essentially, +/-2 stops with 3 shot AEB in RAW gives you +/-3 or 4 stops of coverage. If you haven't got your dynamic range in 8 stops, you never will.

[MrGrale]

Me tip to car HDR youser's is to paint the car out. HDR dose a dreadfull efect to car paint....

Here are two sampels where I paint the car out.