Thanks guys, I think I understand now. []
Don was there no one at the bean when you took that picture or is that one of the advantages of HDR?
Thanks guys, I think I understand now. [
Don was there no one at the bean when you took that picture or is that one of the advantages of HDR?
It's not a problem. Glad we could help.
When doing multiple exposures, it is best to have the same scene each time - without objects being in some photos and not others because the programs read the pixels within the images to line them up appropriately.
Not sure about my best, but this is one of my favorites. Although, strictly speaking, it was made from just a single exposure, but that didn't stop Photomatix.
Who said HDR needs to be in color?
Originally Posted by maloner
Single exposure "pushed" and "pulled" = pseudo-hdr
HDR definitely does not need to be in color. If you want as many tones as possible from black to white, hdr is definitely the way to go.
If you want to get picky about semantics, then there isn't a single HDR image on this thread, just tone-mapped jpgs.
I'm not a fan of the "pseudo" term when the workflow I used to create this image is the exact same as what I would use with two, three, or ten exposures. It's one thing if you're using curves and layers and blending to try to make a jpg look like it's more than it is, because that process has nothing to do with HDR imaging, but a RAW file already has more data than can be displayed in it, so the pushing and pulling of a single frame is really quite the same as pushing and pulling multiple exposures.
That sounded a little more prissy than intended. OK, much more - it's still my favorite.
could you show us how to make a "real" HDR image? from the threads I've seen online, here and other places, bracketing is the only way I know so far. Is there any other way to produce a true HDR? I wonder how did Ansel did it.
At its simplest, an HDR image is just a photo that shows more of the shadows and more of the highlights than is possible in a standard shot. In computing terms, an HDR image is created when you make an image that contains quite a bit more data than a single exposure could hold.
With film, you need multiple exposures, although you can probably cheat it a bit (ahem, psuedo-HDR it a bit
With digital, that's still the best way -- but the fact is a raw file already has more data than you can really show in a single exposure without compressing the dynamic range down a bit. You can blow highlights when shooting raw and recover them somewhat.
A true HDR image (in the digital sense) is generated when you load multiple exposures into Photomatix (or even just one exposure; it does the same process), before you tone map the final shot. If you view it on your screen, you'll see a really ugly mass of wildly overexposed and underexposed areas, usually with a little rectangle that floats around with your cursor allowing you to see a localized version that is mapped to your monitor so that you can actually tell what is there.
Another place to see them is in any high-end computer game. They all use HDR images because it allows you to see in dark areas and bright areas depending on where the character is standing/looking. Actually, that's probably the best example of true HDR use today (I would assume modern animated movies use similar techniques).
I am no expert, but I know the technique Ansel Adams used is called tonal mapping which has to do with mapping the tonal values of a scene, knowing which ones you can actually reasonably expose without them being too dark or blown, and then shooting based on that map that you have made (in your head once you are good at it). He may have also done some dark room masking, I am not sure (don't know a lot about his techniques...anyone else?).
I don't, but I'm still astounded by the fact that it was being done as far back as the 30s. When I first heard of the technique, I thought it was the first thing that could truly be described as a digital-only technique. Nope!
Those guys were geniuses.
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