My first HDR attempt

[berrywise]

Had a little down time after a meeting this evening so I shot this street scene to try my hand at HDR photography.

What say you?

[Greg McCary]

Good work. I love the angle. Those buildings compliment the car perfectly. I don't know if the work going on at the bottom of the building takes away from the picture or not. I still like it. Is that a Ford????

[Seb]

Had a little down time after a meeting this evening so I shot this street scene to try my hand at HDR photography.

What say you?

Hello berrysise,

Composition wise, I like it. I like how the car stands out and everything else compliment it. But, it doesn't looks natural in any way. It's a nice image to look at ( I am enjoying it) but it seems to be an illustration rather than a photograph. I don't know if it was deliberate or not.

The thing is that the tones are all very even in their level of luminosity. Also, the colors took a strange "twist" so to speak.

Honnestly, I have yet to see a natural looking photograph crafted with HDR (beside some Michael Reichmann works). My own attempts looked unnatural as well.

Seb

[berrywise]

Hello berrysise,

Composition wise, I like it. I like how the car stands out and everything else compliment it. But, it doesn't looks natural in any way. It's a nice image to look at ( I am enjoying it) but it seems to be an illustration rather than a photograph. I don't know if it was deliberate or not.

The thing is that the tones are all very even in their level of luminosity. Also, the colors took a strange "twist" so to speak.

Honnestly, I have yet to see a natural looking photograph crafted with HDR (beside some Michael Reichmann works). My own attempts looked unnatural as well.

Seb

It should definately look a little unnatural cause I pumped it up with lot's of saturation
One place I'd like to try using HDR is for christmas lights on houses. Capture the house as well as the lights and everything in between.

I find HDR mostly used as a gimick (as it is in my photo) but I think if done properly you could make some pretty cool landscapes with it. Something I have yet to fiddle with.

[Asylum Steve]

It should definately look a little unnatural cause I pumped it up with lot's of saturation

First of all, great pic bw. Love the colors, and as many of you know I'm a sucker for treated images bordering on photo-illustration...:thumbsup:

I'm not sure what you guys mean by "unnatural" when dealing with HDR. If anything, HDR images should look more natural and realistic, as they more closely depict the dynamic range of tones the human eye can see.

In most instances, the human eye quickly (if not instantly) adjusts to both the brightest and the darkest tones in a scene...

Far from a gimmick, HDR is a great new tool. Many pros and advanced amateurs have been exposure bracketing with RAW and combining the files manually in photoshop to get this effect for a long time (myself included). HDR now makes this sometimes tedious process much easier...

Thing is, there is definitely a learning curve with HDR, and much like color balancing an image, tonal balancing is an acquired skill. So, any unnatural results may simply mean you're not quite doing it right...

[biggy smalls]

May be I'm just slow but what is HDR photography?

[Asylum Steve]

May be I'm just slow but what is HDR photography?

Nah, you're not slow. Well, maybe you are, but I doubt it's because of this...

HDR (admittedly not used by that many photogrpahers) is a specialized photoshop tool called High Dynamic Range, which basically combines a handful of original image files, taken over a range of exposures to capture shadow and highlight detail in a scene, letting the user combine them to create a sort of super file with a much higher bit depth and dynamic range.

The images should be identical (except for the exposure), and photoshop takes tonal areas from each of them and combines them to for a single new image file...

[Sebastian]

HDR stand for high dynamic range, a technique used for years in animation and other graphics fields for reflection mapping as well as more realistic illumination of composited scenes. It has recently made its way into PS CS2 as a tool to extend the dynamic range of photographic capture devices. Mainly, it does what has been done for years with merging different exposures of images.

Coincidentally, the new Sony DSLR does something similar in-camera for some modes.

[Sebastian]

OOPS.

Steve, missed your post..sorry. Will you ever forgive me? <3

[drg]

I liked this when I saw it in the gallery!

My primary comment (echoing Steve) has to do with some of the tones and colores. The clouds just aren't coming across real well. Looks like in the combination process the HDR action/filter posterized (reduced the number of colors) in the clouds. They look flat or artificial. There's a minor miscoloration reflected in the grill of the car that is about the same color/tone as the bad clouds.

Other than those two things, this is a good photograph both as an HDR example and as a urban scene. That style of building is one I've enjoyed shooting over the years.

Hope you do more, these are lots of fun. Thanks for showing this one!

[Asylum Steve]

The clouds just aren't coming across real well. Looks like in the combination process the HDR action/filter posterized (reduced the number of colors) in the clouds.

Drg, any sky banding or color posterization effects in this shot have nothing to do with HDR. Those are there because of the other filters berrywise used to "pimp" the image up (apologize if that offends anyone!)...

A straight HDR effect looks like a completely ordinary photo only better, because there is detail in every part of the scene. HDR adds to the amount of image information in a file, it doesn't diminish it.

He's combined effects here, so it is very difficult to get a grasp of what HDR by itself did...

[Asylum Steve]

OOPS.

Steve, missed your post..sorry. Will you ever forgive me? <3

When I came online and first saw this thread, I was taking a break from reading about how to optimize performance and frame rate for my new PC game, Oblivion. I looked at the term in bw's post, HDR, and had to remind myself exactly what that was.

So, when I finished my first reply, I went back to the Oblivion "tweaking guide" I had downloaded, and do you know what the first thing I read was?

How to enable and disable HDR in the game to improve frame rate...

Wierd...

[Sebastian]

Steve,

I'm glad you mentioned that. In games, the technique is slightly different. It simulates things like the adjustment period of the human eye when walking out into the sun from inside a dark room. Same concept, different implementation.

BTW, everyone I know that has the game loves it...

[berrywise]

For anyone interested, and has Photoshp CS2, go out and shoot five or seven shots of the same subject (using a tripod). Start by underexposing your shot by two or three stops (using shutter speed) and then bracketing up one stop at a time until you have shot an equal amount of photos that are under and over exposed as well as a correctly exposed image.

In Photoshop go File>Automate>HDR Merge and from there on have fun

This one I did in about twenty minutes (would be faster if my machine had more ram). Definately a whole lot of things one can do to make it more like a painting and a lot of things that can make it look more like a photograph.

I'd like to try and capture mountain bike photos like this using a properly exposed shot of a rider to add in later. Not sure how that might or might not work.

[Asylum Steve]

I'd like to try and capture mountain bike photos like this using a properly exposed shot of a rider to add in later. Not sure how that might or might not work.

...as Sebastian said, this technique is nothing new. PS's HDR tool simply helps do it in an easier and more precise way.

You may run into some problems if you try to do more of a photo montage. Not sure what you mean by properly exposed shot of a rider to add in later. The HDR tool blends the layers, which is why they recommend bracketing with shutter speed (so the DoF is the same on all the shots).

A seperate image of a person added to an already existing scene using HDR may have some ghosting or some other weird kind of blending. Of course, that in itself might be cool, so why not experiment?

[Asylum Steve]

BTW, everyone I know that has the game loves it...

Yep, sounds like the game Fable claimed to be but wasn't. Only problem is it's a computer resource HOG. Luckily, they give you about a hundred or so vid and sound configurations, so you can improve game performance if you're willing to give up some of the eye candy...

[berrywise]

...as Sebastian said, this technique is nothing new. PS's HDR tool simply helps do it in an easier and more precise way.

You may run into some problems if you try to do more of a photo montage. Not sure what you mean by properly exposed shot of a rider to add in later. The HDR tool blends the layers, which is why they recommend bracketing with shutter speed (so the DoF is the same on all the shots).

A seperate image of a person added to an already existing scene using HDR may have some ghosting or some other weird kind of blending. Of course, that in itself might be cool, so why not experiment?

Maybe I'm not thinking it through properly but if you have a rider in action you are only going to be able to make one exposure of that person in the same position. What I meant by adding the rider in later would be that I would have to add in just the rider (using HDR to create the foreground and background etc). One of the harder things is I like to use a smal aperture as well to get a lot of depth of field but that doesn't really work well for action photos.

That make sense?