HDR Photography

You may be surprised at my sudden interest in HDR photography. There are many reasons for my newfound love but the main reason is a longtime reverence for the 50’s style Kodachrome slides and their unique rendition of color, and the old postcards and calender pictures that looked more like a hand colored black & white photo than color. I always thought they were beautiful.

HDR stands for high dynamic range. It is a processing technique that increase the range of exposure or luminance from shadows to highlights by incredible amounts. I may be FOS, but I think it’s sometimes 5 or 6 stops.

In order to use this process, you must be able to shoot in RAW format. You make three exposures, one at +2 stops, one at normal exposure and one -2 stops. The use of a rock solid tripod is mandatory. The three exposures are then processed through (in my case) Photomatix software. I won’t get into technical details here. You should visit their website and check out their explanations and especially the examples and user galleries there.

Here is an example of a “normally” exposed file without the processing:

Normal exposure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s the image after processing and tonemapping in Photomatix:

Final processed and tonemapped image after correction in Photoshop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though they are small thumbnails you should be able to see the difference in tonal range. 

Here are some more examples of shots from the last couple of days, both true HDR images from three exposures and “psuedo” images processed from one exposure. I think you’ll be able to see why I’m so excited.

Island Park Bandshell

View from Island Park

Dayton Skyline

Beautiful Downtown Dayton (without all the Riff Raff)

Rooster and Wagon

That’s all for now. In the next several days I’ll post some more as I get the them processed and finalized.