HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography

So my friend Doug and I where chatting the other day, and he mentioned that he was wanting to try out some HDR photography... Typical of myself, being clueless to most things related to photography, (at least I still feel that way) I asked Doug what the heck he was talking about. He explained it well for me, and gave me a good idea of what it is, and how cool it can be. I've run across an example or two (okay, lots) as well as a good explination and tutorial. So I've given it a try. I can't say I felt all that inspired by anything around me today, so the shots aren't all that interesting. I did one indoors, and one outdoors. I suspect the outdoor shot would have been more interesting had it been closer to dusk. And all in all, it gives me further urgency to get a tripod (which has now moved to the top of my photo gear want list).



As you can see from the images, I used a application called Photomatix to do the processing. It seems to work pretty well, and gives you the ability to tweak things quite a bit before the final process is complete. It guides you through the workflow well, IMHO. Small fee required to get rid of the watermarks of course. For playing around and seeing what this stuff is all about though, I'll live through the watermarks. If you are curious what the images looked like before hand, I've sampled some of the image collection it takes to make these, and put them together below. The left being the most under exposed, middle being the average, and actually what my camera's "P mode" decided to use, and the right being the most over exposed. Essentially, I focused the camera and let the P mode decide stuff. Then I translated those settings to manual mode and took 4-5 pictures on each side, either increasing or decreasing shutter speed. (Click on the pictures to get more detail)


I haven't quite figured out what the green aberration is on the lower right portion of the couch is yet. I suspect it might be a reflection on the lens, or possibly the UV filter that's on the front. can't say I'm too pleased about it. Its the first I've ever seen of it though... odd, I got out the lens cleaner and polished stuff up. I have to try and recreate a few shots to see if I can get it to come back. Sigh.

It'll be interesting to see how useful this process because for antarctic photography. I suspect it might yield some nice stuff. I might be taking advantage of the free trial of photoshop CS3 for that though. I found tutorials of doing HDR processing in CS2, so I imagine CS3 has to do it too. Yet another thing to save my pennies for.