First Attempt at HDR Photography


link to higher res

For those who don’t know what HDR means, it stands for High Dynamic Range. You see, the tones in most photos are very compressed. If you’ve messed around with outdoor photography, you might often notice that what you thought was an amazingly beautiful sight in person turns out to be quite a flat, boring picture when you look at it later. The primary reason for this is that our eyes process light in a fundamentally different way to cameras. Hence the invention of HDR. Check it out, look into it, it’s really interesting stuff.

here’s another

higher res

Doesn’t jpeg compression destroy the HDR effect? So we can’t actually see it on these pics.

no

True JPEG just is a fancy compression system that looks at the way an image is part by part and then assumes the way the images will be across the contingent image bit, or better said block by block. It does not change the general rules of an image it just makes assumptions on how they will progress. Probably why Bitmap takes up so much more room, because it represents everything as is without an algorithm to diminish the data’s size. Bloody clever algorithm but generally a JPEG may well not be as good as bit map but that doesn’t mean it will not be, depends on the image in question.

@phyll: it’s doubtful your eye is fine-tuned enough to see any significant difference between the un-jpged 16bit tiff HDR and this jpg anyway.

The “HDR Effect” is more about the level of detail in the picture. If I were to show you my original, un-HDRed exposures (which I can do tomorrow if you like), it’d become quite clear to you what’s so “HDR” about these pictures. The HDR Effect is just a visual effect, not really much dependent on how compressed the file is.

That’s not bad idea FJ, show the contrast, I can see the tonal quality but it will be so much easier to see in contrast.

ok, will do. they won’t be pretty though, just warning ya. seeing the original exposures of an HDR photographer is kinda like seeing Katy Perry before she’s had a chance to fix her hair and put on makeup.

embarrassing…

Alright, for each picture I took about 6 different exposures, from dark to light, but I’d rather just show you a single medium exposure from each set:

Wow sir, I am genuinely impressed with your artistic sensibility. O:) =D>