HDR photos to share

[ToddG]

Well, this morning the wife and boy and I went to one of our state parks and spent half the day. I took the digi-camera along for some photos as usual. I played with HDR photography again today and I think I got a couple of pretty decent shots to share with you all. The first one I though was pretty awesome as you can see the fog not quite burned off yet in the valley, off in the distance. I took it probably around 8:00am. All feedback welcomed. Take a look and tell me what you think.







I have a few others, but I felt these were the best ones to share. Hope you enjoy them.

[Phil'sFrontier]

Pretty cool looking shots. Quite a wide dynamic range for sure! I know only the basics of HDR, what program do you use to create them? Also what kind of gear do you use? I have a D80+18-200mmVR lens most of the time. Also I use Photoshop Lightroom, as well as CS2 which does HDR I think; though I have never tried it.

[Zero Six LE]

Nice shots Todd. I have no idea what HDR is.

[mike]

Originally Posted by ToddG

. The first one I though was pretty awesome as you can see the fog not quite burned off yet in the valley, off in the distance. I took it probably around 8:00am. All feedback welcomed. Take a look and tell me what you think.

Amazing. Love the scenery.

[Phil'sFrontier]

Originally Posted by Zero Six LE

Nice shots Todd. I have no idea what HDR is.

It stands for High Dynamic Range

[timbo13]

nice pics, Todd

I like the first one best, what a view!

[ToddG]

First thanks for all the compliments guys.

Originally Posted by Phil'sFrontier

Pretty cool looking shots. Quite a wide dynamic range for sure! I know only the basics of HDR, what program do you use to create them? Also what kind of gear do you use? I have a D80+18-200mmVR lens most of the time. Also I use Photoshop Lightroom, as well as CS2 which does HDR I think; though I have never tried it.

The program I use is Photomatix Pro. You can download a shareware version, not sure what the limitations are, probably a watermark is my guess. I have the full version I think it was $99. It's a stand alone software specifically for HDR generation and tone mapping. It's simple and efficient to work with, imo. I believe you are correct that CS2 can do HDR although it might require a plugin? I haven't explored that route. I also have CS2 maybe I'll check into it sometime.

My equipment? Don't laugh! Well first of all I must say that I majored in photography for two years before switching up to engineering (this was late 80's). I've had many, many SLR's over the years. A couple of years ago I bought the D70 with a couple of lenses new off Ebay. It is and was a great camera. The only problem was I never felt like packing everything up and lugging it with me. The size and bulk had me leaving it home all the time and instead grabbing a point and shoot. I ended up selling it on Ebay while liquidating several of my dust collecting toys. I've been telling myself to get another DSLR and days like yesterday depress me thinking that I still don't have another one. But anyway, we have several point and shoot digital cameras in this house. My absolute favorite of the bunch and the one I took the above pictures with is . . . drum roll please . . . . . . . the Sony DSC-P200. Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lense 7.2 megapixels. It has full manual override of everything basically, apereture priority, shutter priority modes, and of course full "green" (auto) mode for dummies or when you're lazy like I am most of the time It's an awesome camera for the complete beginner but packed with all the features a seasoned photographer would want or need for specific conditions. Plus it's pretty damn small, not much bigger than a cell phone. Makes it ideal for hiking like yesterday. Not having the flexibility of lense choices etc like the DSLRs offer is a trade off. I think it does very well, I've always liked Sony's digital cameras, this is my third one. I would also recommend Kodak's digi cams, the wife has one of their latest ones and it does very well also.

Originally Posted by Zero Six LE

Nice shots Todd. I have no idea what HDR is.

Originally Posted by Phil'sFrontier

It stands for High Dynamic Range

Yep Phil nailed it. In a nutshell here's a quick explanation. What the human eyes and a camera sees are quite different. Your eye is continuously adjusting from light to dark conditions to allow your brain to make out every last detail in your view. Your pupils open and close as necessary. A camera meters the frame you're taking and does it's best to give an even exposure. In other words everything, especially the center of the frame (depending on the metering mode you use) will be exposed properly, not too bright, not too dark. However, no matter what camera you use (or hand held light meter) metering is a compromise of light and dark. Sometimes to get the subject lit (in this case for me it was landscape) you will get areas in the photo that will be either under lit (loss of detail) or over lit (washed out). HDR corrects this by blending 3 exact frames together and generating one of High Dynamic Range. Using a tripod, I shoot one exposure exactly the way the camera meters as "normal" exposure, then one frame two stops above +2ev (lighter than "normal") and one two stops below -2ev (darker than "normal"). The software blends these three frames together and balances out the exposure. Photomatix's power feature is the tone mapping, which is always required after blending these frames together. I just recently started to play with HDR and I think the results are amazing when you get it right.

This has me thinking DSLR again unfortunately. I might have to throw down some dough and snag me another one.

Here's maybe a better explanation and one of the tutorials that I used a while back to get me started in HDR.


Thanks again guys, and try some HDR out, you'll be glad you did! It's actually very simple to do, and all the fancy words I used are just the photographer in me speaking. If it sounds too hard to you, I assure you it's not at all. Anybody with a decent camera, a tripod, the right software and just a little patience can make spectacular photos way better than the ones I shot. Search the net for HDR photos and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I've gotta run right now, but later I'll post up a before and after of a different photo so you can see what my camera metered as the correct exposure, and what HDR did to correct it and bring it to life.

We should get an HDR photo thread started (sticky?) , or post them here if you want, of all the cool HDR phots you have taken, originals only please. Now that would be cool!

Second part:

Alrighty, as promised here's a standard jpg vs. an HDR one. I just took these earlier around the house.

Standard:


HDR:



Not as drastic of a difference as the landscape shots. Seems my camera did pretty well on the standard exposure. If you look closely though, the center part of the Clematis is washed out and very little detail exists in the standard photo vs. the HDR one. Also with the tone mapping much more color is evident in the HDR shot. More vibrant is how I would describe the HDR vs. standard, blending the lights and darks make it richer looking. The greens are greener and the fuchsia is deeper in color. It's hard to do a good comparison when they are top to bottom like on this page. If you download both images and toggle back and forth in Microsoft picture viewer the differences become much more evident.

This was a pretty standard, full sun exposure. Not as many shadows due to the angle of the sun directly overhead. I prefer early morning and late day for natural lighting (the sun) pictures. The sun at more extreme angles really adds to most any outdoor picture, imo. During those times is when HDR and tone mapping make the biggest (and best) differences in my experience so far.

I need to get a few of the Fronty with a nice backdrop to post up. She needs a bath (dirty from the state park trails/roads) and since rain is in the forecast for the next fews days, the truck photo shoot will have to wait until next weekend I'm afraid.

So anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying the photos and my explanations. And, hopefully this will spark some interest for others on the board here. As I take more HDR shots worthy of posting I will add them to this thread.

Now, get out there and take some HDR photos!