Another HDR photo attempt:

M

mwin

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 24, 2004
Messages
3,377
http://www.mustangevolution.com/forum/attachments/18703d1202662478-combined.jpg

I made another attempt at HDR photography. It turned out alright, I think. This is my living room, facing west, at about 4:30pm. I love to open up all the windows as the sun sets out over the hills out west of my house. The lighting is awesome. When I move out of this house, that's probably what I'm going to miss most. So, anyway, I made this picture out of a composite of six pictures with varying exposure times.

Let me know what you think about how it turned out. I'm still pretty new at this.
 
What's HDR? That looks like a regular picture of a living room to me, am I missing something?
 
aaronearles said:
What's HDR? That looks like a regular picture of a living room to me, am I missing something?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

Basically, cameras cannot see in the dynamic range that our eyes can.
If you were to use a digital camera and take a regular picture of the room, you'd have a possibility of two outcomes:

  • You expose for the world outside the windows, and the inside of the room looks dark (underexposed).
  • You expose for the living room, and the world outside the windows is overexposed and possibly blown out.
With HDR, you take at least two exposures, one exposing for the foreground, and one for the background. You then combine the two images and have a picture that has a properly exposed background and foreground.
 
Thanks for the explanation. Not to hijack the thread, and pardon my inexperience with photography, but do you achieve this type of exposure from shooting in raw and later merging the images in an app like photoshop?
 
I just realized it may look like I'm a photographer because of the link in my sig, that's actually my dad's company and I've heard him talk about some things here and there, that's why I'm curious.
 
aaronearles said:
Thanks for the explanation. Not to hijack the thread, and pardon my inexperience with photography, but do you achieve this type of exposure from shooting in raw and later merging the images in an app like photoshop?
Click to expand...

You can shoot in RAW, as one of the advantages in shooting in such a format is the ability to push or pull the exposure by +/- 2 stops without significant degradation.

A better way to do it is "bracket" the exposures. Basically, tell the camera to take a picture a -1 EV (exposure value), 0 EV, and +1 EV (or whatever EVs you want). That way you have the same picture taken with different settings "out of the camera," instead of trying to fiddle around with only one picture later.
 
Mark305TBI said:
http://www.mustangevolution.com/forum/attachments/18703d1202662478-combined.jpg

I made another attempt at HDR photography. It turned out alright, I think. This is my living room, facing west, at about 4:30pm. I love to open up all the windows as the sun sets out over the hills out west of my house. The lighting is awesome. When I move out of this house, that's probably what I'm going to miss most. So, anyway, I made this picture out of a composite of six pictures with varying exposure times.

Let me know what you think about how it turned out. I'm still pretty new at this.
Click to expand...

I'd look for some more exciting subjects.
 
I haven't tried this yet, although I'd like to one of these days... What software are you using?
 
Nicolaskl said:
I'd look for some more exciting subjects.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know my living room probably isn't very exciting to anyone else but me. It was really more of an experiment to see how well I could capture the lighting with the camera. It's also got some sentimental value to me, so I went ahead and went with it.

Wet1 said:
I haven't tried this yet, although I'd like to one of these days... What software are you using?
Click to expand...

Photoshop CS2
 
HDR is a bit of a misnomer, as neither Windows nor your monitor are really capable of displaying a true HDR image. Photoshop CS2+ (and various plugins or other software) go through a process called tone-mapping to attempt to represent all the detail present in a HDR image in a standard 24-bit JPEG.

One thing you'll likely learn through experimentation with tone-mapping is that it rarely gives the desired results right off the bat. For example, if you have a high-contrast landscape scene, tone-mapping will often underexpose the sky to the extreme. On the rare occasions I use tone-mapping, I generally do it on a separate layer that I can then mask to blend it back with the original photo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top