High Dynamic Range photography
Apr. 17th, 2007 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ambitious_wenchI'm still trying to get my head around the concept of High Dynamic Range photography. One of the things that distresses me about my photography is that I can never seem to recreate what I see with my eyes onto the monitor of my computer, via my camera.
When I take pictures of a sunrise, I see details in the rocks, I see details of the clouds, I see the subtle wash of light and shadow. But my pictures often lack details in the shadows. I've come to accept that lack of detail, often shooting specifically to introduce silhouettes rather than capture detail.
The human eye is capable of adjusting so fast that when you look at a thing, you see details in shadows, and not "blow out" the lighter bits of the scene. That's why you can't get pictures of what you see. The camera can't make those adjustments automatically.
The trick is to make those adjustments on the final image. That's where HDR comes in.
As far as I can tell, it can be done in several ways. You can take three or more images, and use software to combine them. Or, you can take one image, make adjustments to it, saving it as multiple images, and then combine them. It seems to me that the second option is better because even with a tripod, there are minute changes in multiple captures that show up as blurs when you combine them.
I've seen some incredible images, and some pretty crappy ones. There also seems to be some controversy over this technique. "It's not real" seems a bit disingenuous to me; Photography isn't "real" in the first place.
If you have been looking at my photostream on Flickr, you may note that I am taking multiple shots of the same image. I'm trying to capture different exposures of the same thing as a pre-cursor to using Photoshop CS2 to create HDR images.
Watch this space for my attempts. Wish me luck!
When I take pictures of a sunrise, I see details in the rocks, I see details of the clouds, I see the subtle wash of light and shadow. But my pictures often lack details in the shadows. I've come to accept that lack of detail, often shooting specifically to introduce silhouettes rather than capture detail.
The human eye is capable of adjusting so fast that when you look at a thing, you see details in shadows, and not "blow out" the lighter bits of the scene. That's why you can't get pictures of what you see. The camera can't make those adjustments automatically.
The trick is to make those adjustments on the final image. That's where HDR comes in.
As far as I can tell, it can be done in several ways. You can take three or more images, and use software to combine them. Or, you can take one image, make adjustments to it, saving it as multiple images, and then combine them. It seems to me that the second option is better because even with a tripod, there are minute changes in multiple captures that show up as blurs when you combine them.
I've seen some incredible images, and some pretty crappy ones. There also seems to be some controversy over this technique. "It's not real" seems a bit disingenuous to me; Photography isn't "real" in the first place.
If you have been looking at my photostream on Flickr, you may note that I am taking multiple shots of the same image. I'm trying to capture different exposures of the same thing as a pre-cursor to using Photoshop CS2 to create HDR images.
Watch this space for my attempts. Wish me luck!