what is HDR?

 

High Dynamic Range photography. It's used when a single exposure can't capture all the color and shadows in the frame so you use multiple exposures to capture each different range of the scene.

 

thanks!

 

oh man i shouldnt have dropped my photography class

 

You wanna see some really **** arguments, go check out people trying to decide exactly what HDR really is or isn't...

Some people claim single RAW shots can be made HDR, some say you can only HDR multiple shots, then there is the argument of exactly how much range qualifies as "high" and whether simply displaying 10bits of data on an 8 bit display means you are showing HDR...

Problem is HDR is a term that doesn't have a solid real world definition at the moment... many people simply apply the fake HDR option in Photomatix to get crazy local contrast and call that HDR.

I have to agree, there is not much in these shots that shows extra dynamic range... would even believe these were single shots processed maybe.

But I still like the shots. Not pro magazine quality or anything, but I like them better than 90% of the amature shots floating around out there...

Just my opinion though.

 

HDR is very useful to get a shot of something that has a WIDE range of brightness and color in the picture. I fyou are taking a picture of something you will focus on the object, the camera can only capture (to the correct exposure) the object you are focusing on.
Now if the background is VERY bright OR DARK, it will be under or over exposed. The only way to compensate for this is to take multiple pictures and merge them so you are using the correct exposure of the object, plus the correct exposure of the back ground, and the correct exposure of the foreground.

Unless you have perfect lighting you cant do this in a normal single shot. Now if the whole area is equally lit, it will look decent.

but take my picture below. This was when I first tried HDR. It was very bright out. If I focused on the brightness of the sky, the car turned out dark. If I focused on the brightness of the car, the sky was bright white and not blue.

I merged 6 pictures and now have the tree color showing, sky showing and the car showing. Plus the ground showing its true color. (old school orange gravel in Yorktown)






Not a perfect HDR, but gives the example of how the car looks amazing and sky isnt washed out.

 

 

Now compare to this:

 

HDR is fuuun


nice pics

here are some of mine







oh and nick are your hdr pics photoshopped hdr pics or actual one shot hdr?

 

They dont look HDR at all!....Have u looked up what HDR photos look like???....lol

 

HDR photos are always photoshopped and can't be shot in camera...thus the reason people do HDR

 

 

Scion Jon, they unfortunatly, TO ME ATLEAST, dont look HDR. You have dark areas and extremely bright areas. The purpose of HDR is to Eliminate that.


Teecizzle that is an awesome example of true HDR.


DonNGuyen. HDR can be shot in a camera. My Canon shoots in HDR. I just then have to take those pictures and process them. So you are right they cant be shot and combined in camera, but they can be shot in camera.

ScionJon, there is no such thing as a one SHOT HDR. They have to be multiple pictures. And they arent photoshopped. I use photomatrix to merge. No editing or photoshoping done other than resizing and cropping.


I will post the pictures used to get those pics.

 

what i meant is...you can take the shots to be make an HDR photo, but you can't take a single frame and have it come out like an HDR photo....

 

nice pics.

 

Here's a few HDR Tuturiol links:

http://www.hdrjapan.com/photography/...r-photography/

Here's a good site!

http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/

 

Check this site out...

http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/

 

Okay, I have a friend who is into photography and has a nice SLR camera and all that good stuff. And he's got several beautiful HDR shots. From what I've gathered hanging out with him and learning from him, this is my defintion/explanation of HDR:

An HDR image, is a single image, comprised of taking several "RAW" images, each of which is at a different exposure. Longer exposure shots bring out the color in the normally dark areas of the picture, while the shorter exposure pictures that are taken, don't allow the bright areas to get so bright that you can't pick out details.

All in all, this makes your colors more, hmm...vibrant maybe is the word? Your green grass looks greener, your sky has a deeper blue, or more deep, dark clouds, etc.....

When you have your raw images, it's not a process in which you can just take each picture and paste them on top of one another and adjust opacity. There are special programs out there that allow you to open each picture and when you are ready it will take them and "morph" them all together. Your result is a rich, vibrant picture like the one that TeeCizzle posted.

The 3rd and 4th pics tctuner posted look like good examples, but they look kinda grainy/noisy, i'm guessing they just got resized or something when you posted them?

I didn't take time to read everyone's answers about what HDR is, so I may be stating a bunch of stuff that was already said. Regardless, that's my understanding of HDR images.

 

That is deffinetly what HDR is. But the pictures dont have to be RAW. They can be done in normal JPG format. But RAW is much much better. And its not exposure timing you adjust. You adjust the range of the aperture value. usually plus 1-2 steps in either direction from normal.

 

click to enlarge, when the link opens lol
http://scionjon.deviantart.com/art/Grasshopper-75871090
this was my 3rd attempt to do hdr back in january

what do you guys think?