BASIC HDR PHOTOGRAPHY

I’ve been wanting to do HDR photography since I saw my first HDR picture. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging. It’s a method of heightening image intensity, and it’s not that tough to do.

Here’s the first HDR photo I’ve ever taken. It’s of our living room.

The living room pic took about a minute to produce on free software.

You will need four things to create basic HDR photos.

1. A digital camera that can bracket exposures.
2. A tripod.
3. A decent computer (preferably a Mac).
4. HDR processing software.

The first step is to set up your digital camera for automatic exposure compensation. This is commonly known as bracketing exposures. This means that you take one picture  at correct exposure, one overexposed and another underexposed. You will need to take at least three shots at different exposures to create an HDR image. Why three shots? They come close to capturing the full range of light of your subject. If you have a dark foreground, then the sky may be washed out. If you compensate for the bright sky, then your foreground will be dark, and so on. HDR processing will blend the three shots together to produce a wider, fuller spectrum, therefore intensifying your image.

I have a Canon t2i that automatically brackets three exposures. I usually set the range at two stops, that is two stops overexposed and two stops under exposed. I press the shutter release three times to capture the set of images.

You don’t have to have an expensive digital camera to bracket exposures. I also have a little Nikon Coolpix 3100 that can easily bracket exposures, although it’s a manual process.

When you find a scene you want to photograph, use a tripod and a cable release if you have one. One of the problems with HDR photography is incorrect image overlap. Pressing the shutter release can bump and shake your tripod, messing up your set of images. Even worse if you hand-hold your camera.

Before taking your photos you should set your camera to aperture priority mode. This maintains consistent exposure and depth of field. It isn’t a show stopper if your camera doesn’t support aperture priority mode, but it does make a difference in the final image.

So now that your pictures are taken it’s time to load them onto your computer and process them. So what’s a good program to use without spending an arm and a leg? I recommend luminance-hdr. It works really well, is easy to understand and is FREE. luminace-hdr is built on open source software and takes about three minutes to download and install. It’s available for Mac and Windows operating systems.

Once inside luminace-hdr a creation wizard walks you through the steps to create and process an HDR image. You load in your three images then click Next. Remember to check the autoalign box. This makes sure your three images line up correctly.

As the wizard moves along you’re presented with a list of predefined profiles that condition your image.  After this completes comes the fun part where you Tonemap your  new composite image. luminance-hdr provides nine different operators that you can fiddle and experiment with. And you will, for hours.

HDR photography, which was so mysterious to me now makes sense. It’s easy to go overboard using the effects because they’re fun. Like any other tool, photographers  learn to finesse HDR images by using less rather than more, and that’s what I want to learn how to do. All it takes is practice.

Here’s a few images I took and processed today.

Wagner Park, Royal Oak, Michigan:

Wagner Park, Royal Oak, Michigan

Back Yard Chairs:

Wagner Park, Royal Oak, Michigan