HDR Images

[sammo303]

Has anyone tried making HDR images? I've only just stumbled across the concept and I'd love to experiement.

If anyone on here has any tips, tricks, examples, etc. I'd love to hear / see them.

[matt wilson]

Love them.There's a few in my galleries some natural looking and some highly processed.Google Photomatix and you can get a trial of the software .(higher versions of photoshop allow it but for me you can't beat photomatix .

[chris-p]

I shoot a lot of HDR. I used to write long answers to these posts but now I just direct people to my own tutorials...

HDR is really popular now and I think it's difficult to get your HDR to stand out from the crowd. Personally, I'm not a fan of heavily processed HDR work. For me, the best HDR shots are those where you don't realise it's HDR - it's subtle, realistic and clean.

Oh, and Photomatix is the best software going.

[sammo303]

Originally Posted by chris-p

For me, the best HDR shots are those where you don't realise it's HDR - it's subtle, realistic and clean.

Is that something you can control in Photomatix, or do you vary the exposure range until it looks natural?

[chris-p]

Both.

The first sign of a bad HDR (or reason for over-processing) is a lack of tonal range. This comes from not shooting enough exposures, usually because people rely on the exposure bracketing feature of their camera and only use the 3 shots. What if -2 (or -3 depending on your camera) isn't underexposed enough? High contrast scenes often require much more under or over exposure but the most important thing is to shoot every whole stop in between (ie -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3 & +4). That way you get smoother transition between tones and a better range of luminance values as well.

If you shoot like that, you don't have to push Photomatix so hard to get the full dynamic range covered so you introduce less noise and you get much more natural looking results.

You can still over process though. I post these as examples only (they are not my work). Neither look real. Both are horribly over processed. There's halos and noise everywhere.

[chris-p]

This could also be a competition. Can you spot the obvious mistake with these pictures???

[sammo303]

Thanks Chris.

I've tried making an HDR photo but instantly hit a snag: moving objects. Even something moving slowly, such as the moon, is a problem. Any advice on capturing something like the below photo but making it crisp and clear? These constituent photos were taken within a minute of each other!

[chris-p]

Hmm, well movement is an issue. The normal way around it is not to use HDR but use DRI (create new files by under and over exposing 1 RAW file from the camera). However the moon shouldn't be an issue. I've done HDR shots of both the sky and the moon and never had that much of a problem.

It's too small to see if there is movement in the moon at the size the forums allow but you could try to re-process it and change the way the files are aligned. What software do you use?

[sammo303]

The photo above doesn't have much dynamic range, and that's because the more photos I put into Photomatix, the more blurred the result. Here's a closeup of the moon on the photo I posted, which is made from 4 jpegs.



I shall try under / over exposing one or two of the raw files and post the result.

[sammo303]

Okay, here's images produced using 1 and 2 raw files, respectively.





The first one is quite noisy but the second is a lot better. The second photo is arguably better than the original actually, so thanks for the suggestion.

Any ideas how to make this picture have more impact? It looked a great scene but is sadly lacking something I feel.