Originally Posted by Jeff
Just thought this would be fun to start... Post your favorite HDR photo you have taken!
Here's mine:
Jeff, the lighting on this is tremendous. If you hadn't told me it was HDR based, I wouldn't have known. I tend to prefer staying away from surreal looks with tonemapping and to keep it as real as possible. This is a gorgeous image!
Michael, these interior shots are gorgeous. As someone who photographs mainly hotels and restaurants, I really appreciate seeing this done well. Are you using a tilt shift lens, or just correcting the perspectives in CS? I'd be curious to know what gear you are using for these shots. Are you using purely natural light, or supplementing this with strobes, etc?
John, I do corrections in Photoshop for lens distortions. I wish I had a TS, but opted for various primes to cover a range of focal lengths.
Gear? Various. Depends on situtation.
Canon 5D, 16-35mm f/2.8 L II and 24-70mm f/2.8 L
Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8G; 28mm f/2.8 Ai-s; 35mm f/2.0D, 50mm f/1.4 Ai-s; 85mm f/1.4D
Sigma SD14, 10-20mm f/4-5.6; 30mm f/1.4; 50-150mm f/2.8
I mostly use the D3 - 14-24mm combo. But you can't put a filter on that lens so when I shoot interiors at night with tungsten I use the 5D - 16-35m combo so I can use blue filters and custom white balance to feed the blue channel rather than losing DR and increasing noise otherwise.
The lighting question is where this all began. It took every penny I had to buy the 5D - 16-35mm. I had nothing left for lighting. Hence why I looked into HDRI. The rest is history. I'd still like to be able to use lighting, but when I was ready to start purchasing really good high end lighting, I fell in love with the D3 and that sharp as hell 14-24mm combo. So I sold all my video equipement to buy it and had nothing left for lighting!!!! So I just kept shooting brackets and pushing it through a HDRI pipeline and I'm still wanting to get good lighting someday when I can afford it.
My wife has been looking for work for almost a 9 months now so I haven't been able to save any money for lighting and keep using HDRI workflows in the time being. My clients like the look though. There are times though when lighting would really enhance a shot, but I can't tell them that I have no lighting so my mantra is "Well, I really think it looks better just using natural light." LOL!
Hope that helps a bit to answer questions. (off to shoot... bbl)
Michael, thanks for the in-depth reply! Interesting that you use both the 5d as well as the D3...
Seeing as the widest TS lens that I know of is only about 24mm, using the 14mm and correcting the perspective in CS should work just fine, and looks like it does.
Do you run into noise issues with the shadows at all using the HDR?
Also, do you blend exposures manually, or do you use a dedicated HRD software?
So I haven't been playing with HDR much, but here is one from the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica:
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It is an HDR composite of 3 images with my Canon 24-70 on a 40D. The scene didn't need much help in dynamic range, but the extra was appreciated in the sky and the trees.
John, I'm about to shut down and head out to shoot, but real quick...
The HDR tonemappers pull the shadow data from the over exposures and there is less noise there... unlike attempting to pull up shadows from a normally exposed image which does reveal noise in the shadows.
And I mostly use software to tonemap the HDRs created from multiple exposures, but there are times and situations where it is far faster to just use one, two or three of the exposures and either mask in/out or paint in/out areas of the frame. That is only really possible when nothing is in front of windows (meaning interior objects are not sitting in front of a window such as a light fixture, etc).
I love the 5D. I prefer it's color rendition over the D3. I'd go on, but no time. I went to the D3 for two big reasons. I do some "run and gun" shoots for some realtors that don't need or want to pay for higher end work, but want better shots than they can get on their XTis. And the D3 fires off 9 bursts for AEB. 4 under, 1 at, 4 over. The 5D only has 3. I would have bumped up to the 5D markII if they would have at least allowed it to do 5 AEB. The 3 AEB sucks. When shooting with cars passing, wind moving trees/leaves, and such... I really need at least 5 and often 7 exposures one full EV apart.
Gotta run!!!!
damn.... the second reason I forgot to mention. The 14-24mm f/2.8G is the sharpest beast. I had to get the D3 for that thing. I've tripoded off from the same location with the 5D - 16-35mm f/2.8 L II against it and was unable to beat the D3 - 14-24mm combo. And the 14-24mm is amazing at handling glare compared to canon's. And when I am shooting into windows overlooking the ocean... it destroys the 16-35 in comparison tests.
That said. I prefer the 5D for landscapes, weddings and portraits.
Really gone now. Got a 5/5 overlooking the gulf to shoot today and it's sunny.
~~~poof~~~
I think there's some non-linearity in the bit-mapping, such that the top half of the possible levels are used to represent the brightest stop of dynamic range. Therefore, 12-bit conversion doesn't really add as much dynamic range as you might otherwise suspect if you're thinking of binary numbering. I think camera histograms tend to display a four-stop range; assuming that's the case, 12-bit conversion (4096 values) puts the top 2048 values in the brightest stop, another 1024 in the next darker stop, another 512 in the next darker stop, and the last 512 values in the darkest areas. Changing to 14-bit would mean 2048 values in the darkest areas, a significant improvement; 8-bit JPEG means you'd have only 32 values in the darkest areas.
We're a Canon/Profoto family: five cameras, sixteen lenses, fifteen Profoto lights, too many modifiers.
Here's one of mine from last year. I don't shoot a lot of HDR photos for pleasure, but this was one situation in which the only real way to make it work was an HDR...
here's a smaller version!
Hi,
lots of great pictures here
I like to use HDR with a B&W compositions as you can see in these pictures from a shoot in Paris
This is great to capture clouds details too
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