HDR - View of North Wales

[RockNGoalStar]

My personal "hero" is this guy on Flickr - here is an example of what "I" like in a HDR here

Some of that guy's work is stunning! Some I feel is a bit OTT but a lot of it is beautiful!

I downloaded the trial version of Photomatix and had another go...



Now this looks a lot more like what I saw on the day when I shot this. I like the look of this software... I might even buy it!

[NoCard]

I downloaded the trial version of Photomatix and had another go...

IMHO Best one yet....very natural

[Colin Southern]

Thanks for your reply Colin.

My understanding of the reasoning behind an HDR image is to combine several images of bracketed exposures in order to capture a scene that has too wide a dynamic range to be captured successfully by my camera with one single exposure. The desired result is to produce an image with no clipping on either extreme of the histogram.

Hi Tommy,

Yes - that's the HDR side of it in a nutshell - but - say we capture something with 16 stops of DR; what are you going to display it on? Paper will only reproduce around 4 stops, and most monitors only around 6 -- so from a purely HDR perspective, it only ever "exists" as an electronic representation inside our computers.

So part II of the process is compressing perhaps 16 stops of range into 4 to 6 stops; if one were to do that in a linear way then it would look pretty bizarre, so HDR programs (which should probably be called "Tone Mapping Programs") try to fit a square peg in a round hole by compressing the range right down, but in a way that respects the rules of local contrast so that the image looks good. It's at this point where people often go a bit overboard with the sliders; resulting in the over-sharpened / over-saturated / over-processed look - and that in turn has been often mis-associated as being an "HDR Look". By the way - sorry to harp on about it - I just feel that if I don't make the effort to try and clarify the anomoly then it simply grows, and I don't think that helps anyone. Over the years I've seen oh so many posts that read along the lines of "Here's my first HDR - shot from a single exposure (or a single exposure sub-processed into several other psudo-exposure varients and then recombined) - what do you think? ... and what's presented is the "usual" ultra tone-mapped characteristic image, which really isn't HDR at all. Fundamentally, a true HDR image may look no different to any other image; case in point - I wouldn't have been able to retain clean shadows in this image if I didn't use a GND filter to compress the tonal range - thus this is an HDR photo (who would have thought eh?)

Let me see what I can do with one of the RAW files then, but I have a feeling this particular scene requires the combination of at least 2 images.

The difference between a black and white reflective object is only about 4 stops - a given object with the sun behind it often sits about 3 stops below the same object with the sun on it (ie talking about taking back-lighting into account) - and often shadow detail can require another couple of stops. So in a typical scene like yours where there is a degree of back lighting and a degree of shadow detail required, the dynamic range of the scene is probably only going to be in the order of 10 stops - and if you expose correctly (definately a case for exposing to the right here) - you should capture around 12 - so in theory - you should be able to get it with one RAW exposure. Probably the worst that would happen is that some of the shadows may be a little noisy (but it's unlikely you'd see it anyway). The other thing to keep in mind is that most images NEED areas of pure white and areas of pure black so that there is enough contrast and they don't look flat - so even if you capture a wide dynamic range, most of the time you still end up clipping parts of it anyway to make the image look good (and of course the clipping at the low end is going to primarily clip the noise first and foremost, which is why it often isn't a big issue in practice).

So ...

The reason I have a general dislike of HDR programs is ...

(a) they often seem to produce over-processed images by default (which is certainly a different look, but one I tired of pretty quickly)., or

(b) they try to produce a "normal" looking image, but seldom succeed without a lot of work because of their "DNA"

In my humble opinion - 95 times out of 100 it's easier to get a natural looking result using the info already captured in a single RAW exposure. So for me, easier + better result = "easy decision".

The last thing to keep in mind too - the strength of HDR programs is in their tone mapping - but they're never designed to produce a final "ready to print" image ... all they're doing is getting the image to the point where it's no worse than a regular image which should then be fed into "Photoshop" for all of the usual pushes and pulls to produce the final result.

I talk too much

[FrankMi]

I talk too much

LOL! Like many of us, you obviously enjoy sharing and helping others. Sometime it just take a few more words to clearly express a particular concept. Rock on, Colin. You're doing fine!

[RockNGoalStar]

I talk too much

And I for one am glad you do, because what you have to say is very informative and interesting. I really appreciate you taking the time out to clear all that up.

I guess I had some misconceptions about all this HDR malarky and will look at it in a different light from now on.

Thanks Colin

[FrankMi]

Hi Tommy,

If you stop and think about it, High Dynamic Range is simply an aspect of the image. Tonemapping is but one technique available to process an image, HDR or not! If you use the tonemapping process properly, you likely won't be able to determine what process(es) were used and may not even realize that the original may have been an HDR image. I word it this way because I frequently use tonemapping on non-HDR images for entirely different reasons than to recover HDR.

Learning how to effectively use the tonemapping technique is like learning any other photography process. With Photomatix, like Photoshop and Lightroom, it takes time to get a feel for what works well and what doesn't and along the way, you'll make mistakes, seek out answers, and improve your technique.

Tommy, you probably already have the link for the free Photomatix tutorials but if not, let me know and I will post it again.

[RockNGoalStar]

Thanks Frank! That's a good way of putting it!

Tone-mapping techniques and HDR photography are two separate entities that are clearly confused most of the time. I don't think i am confused anymore!

I just wish i'd slapped up a better image to look at when discussing this concept than the one that I did! Ha!

Thanks for all your input!