HDR in the wild

I've talked a little bit about HDR -- High Dynamic Range -- imaging before. HDR allows one to combine the different levels of light that are beyond the ability of the typical camera to capture in single exposure -- you do so by taking multiple exposures of an image at different exposure levels (e.g., underexposed, correct exposure, overexposed) and then use special software to take these various images and combine into a single image that can show more details at all levels -- from the shadows to the highlights.

In Blue Ridge, I tried some various HDR shots during the weekend. The first photo below is a 7-exposure shot -- completely planned for and taken with the intent of making an HDR image. I shot at -3 EV, -2EV, -1EV, 0EV, +1EV, +2EV, and +3EV. I simply imported the 7 photos into Photomatix and combined and tone mapped them to a single image. Lots of detail in the shadows (you can see in the port and window if you zoom in enough), and the railings in the sunrise are not blown out. Great example of how HDR can help create an image.



The next shot is a haphazard HDR, I was shooting various exposures without considering HDR. In post-processing this week, I found 3 shots of various exposures, roughly -2/3 EV, 0 and +1EV and combined them into single shot. HDR helped me pick up a lot more detail in the trees and shadows.



This next shot is a pseudo-HDR -- made from a single exposure. We were in woods, I had no reflector or flash and Ansley's face turned out to be completely dark in the original shot. I tried to salvage the photo by taking the single shot and "underexposing" and "overexposing" it in Lightroom so I wound up with 3 shots. I then combined those in Photomatix the best I could. I was able to tease out some details in the shadows, but it was at the expense of making this look really artificial and has some of the cartoony HDR look that I absolutely hate. Also, these pseudo HDRs look really over-sharpened to me, not sure why, but probably because the overexposure version really blew out the details.


Sort of obvious, but better HDR shots come from those you seriously plan for, and those that have more exposure range in the base photos. I'm going to try printing some of these HDR shots and see how much more detail on can really see in the prints. Will report on that later...