HDR Photography and Photomatix

[Karlos78]

Over exposed sky, under exposed land, clipped histograms, lack of contrast and tones, metering difficulties, hours spent blending multiply exposures using layer masks in photoshop… Does this sound familiar? We’ve all been there, especially when it comes to landscapes and interiors. Ok you can use expensive lee filters, but what if the horizon is not straight or you’re shooting indoors with bright sunshine coming through windows? If these situations sound frustratingly familiar you may be interested in HDR photography.

As you know our eyes can adapt very well to high contrast scenes, but you know your camera cannot cope as well. Effectively our cameras can only take low dynamic range photographs thus not capturing what our eyes see when taking a photo. High Dynamic Range Imaging or HDR overcomes this problem by combining a series of photos of the same seen into an image that reflects what you original saw.

An HDR image contains a very large degree of exposure or brightness values typically around 100,000:1. Such an image cannot be printed on paper or displayed on a screen, as these media do not have sufficient range (normally under 300:1), but the data recorded by an HDR image is a much closer representation to the range of brightness levels perceived in the real world. Apparently a picture of a sun setting displayed on a true HDR monitor will actually hurt your eyes! HDR monitors if you want one currently retail for around 35k!

So like me you don’t have a spare 35k there is another solution. Photomatix an ingenious piece of software from hdrsoft comes to the rescue. Don’t just take my word for it a lot of top British photographers are starting to use it including wildlife photography Andy Rouse. It works by firstly generating a true 32bit HDR image from combining a number of differently exposed images, but remember your monitor cannot display a true HDR image, so Photomatix ‘tone maps’ the HDR image. Basically tone mapping reproduces a HDR image with a ratio 100’000:1 to around 300:1 that our monitors and printers can cope with, but still retaining the full dynamic range. The resulting picture can then be saved as a traditional 8 or 16 bit image. HDR files formats include OpenEXR and Radiance.

This is not meant to be a tutorial but rather an introduction to HDR and Photomatix. There is a wealth of info and examples on the web including a dedicated following on the Flickr website, just type in HDR and see for yourself of this new and exciting approach to old age photography problems. Photomatix can be downloaded from the HDRsoft website as a fully functional program, but will leave watermarks. It retails for about £70. Full instructions can also be downloaded from the website HDR photo software & plugin - Tone Mapping, Exposure Blending & HDR Imaging for photography


A final note, camera manufactures are aware of current sensor limitations, but future sensor technology will certainly have improved dynamic range. We can already see primitive examples in cameras now, for example Sony’s Alpha, sigma and Fuji’s latest sensors all have the capability of capturing higher dynamic range. Forget pixel count its dynamic range you want!

The example below shows a scene that was heavily in shadow, in order to retain the full tonal range separate exposures were required to capture the detail in the shadows and retain detail in the sky. The third image shows the final HDR image tone mapped in Photomatix. You will the exposure and tonal range is greatly improved, to me this is how I remember the scene at the time.

Best of luck, Karl.

[Karlos78]

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[RogerTheCat]

Have tried HDR myself and it is great for landsacpe work and can add life to some dull flat pictures. Having said that it does not work for all pictures but when it does it is spot on

[Karlos78]

Originally Posted by RogerTheCat

Have tried HDR myself and it is great for landsacpe work and can add life to some dull flat pictures. Having said that it does not work for all pictures but when it does it is spot on

I quite agree Rogerthecat, wildlife pictures for example don't always come out better. However that said its a fun bit of software to use and can seriously improve some picture and allow us to take pictures previously very difficuilt to get right.

[glsammy]

Very interesting Karl, thanks for the info. I'll have to give the demo a go.

[Kev Lewis]

Another useful processing technique but personally I find HDR images look 'unreal' with occasionally some very weird colours and gradations

[MalcolmX]

KEV when you get unreal hdr do use 3 or 5 images

[Kev Lewis]

Originally Posted by MalcolmX

KEV when you get unreal hdr do use 3 or 5 images

mainly when I try to stretch the range using only 3 images, the more images I use the better the result but it still gives images that just don't feel right to my eyes

[Karlos78]

Originally Posted by Kev Lewis

mainly when I try to stretch the range using only 3 images, the more images I use the better the result but it still gives images that just don't feel right to my eyes

Hi Kev I would agree with you to a point, when tone mapping images it is easy to go too far and create some truly unnatural images, but if done Subtly can produce something very special, experimentation, vision and perseverance is the key to using these techniques. Interestingly I feel HDR images can challenge the way we look and feel about a photograph. Remember photography has had its own discourse since the early days of the Daguerre cameras, HDR therefore could be argued as another technological development that will influence the question 'what is a photograph'. Thanks for your comments. Cheers Karl.

[Kev Lewis]

Originally Posted by Karlos78

Hi Kev I would agree with you to a point, when tone mapping images it is easy to go too far and create some truly unnatural images, but if done Subtly can produce something very special, experimentation, vision and perseverance is the key to using these techniques. Interestingly I feel HDR images can challenge the way we look and feel about a photograph. Remember photography has had its own discourse since the early days of the Daguerre cameras, HDR therefore could be argued as another technological development that will influence the question 'what is a photograph'. Thanks for your comments. Cheers Karl.

I don't have any problem with technology improving photography lol I'm always experimenting with something or other. I know in the right hands HDR works, I just don't have the right hands .... yet, but I rarely shoot landscape so my need to use HDR is very limited