I kind of explained how the HDR (high dynamic range) thing works in the daily photo thread. Pictures are worth a thousand words, this will better show what's happening.
If set to do so, most DSLR cameras today will "bracket" and automatically take multiple photos in a row at different exposure levels. Current Canons will do three shots and the new Nikons will do five shots at a time. The cameras make this easy to do.
Here we go . . .
Photo 1: This shot is a "proper" exposure level (according to the meter in the camera) for the main subject (the river). This is a copy of the RAW file right out of the camera with no processing so it looks aditionally flat. Additional processing would help it, but as it is, there is no detail in the sky or the shadow area of the trees, but the river and trees around it look properly exposed.
Photo 2: This is the 2nd shot automatically taken by the camera with the exposure set too dark. Notice though that we now have detail and clouds in the sky but everything else is now way too dark.
Photo 3: This is the automatically taken third shot, with this one purposly set to being over exposed. Everything is "blown out" except for what were the dark areas of the shadows now have some detail.
Now we open up the HDR software and tell it to use those three shots. In the software, we can play with sliders to adjust a bunch of different levels and intensity and then when it does its thing, we get the result I went with:
It is kind of a funky, painted, fake, look, but yet interesting, fun. It's possible to apply even more processing to the result making it look very cartoonish. At a modest level, it's closer to what our eye actually sees in real life. Our eyes quickly adjust to see the detail in the bright sky and dark shadows. Cameras can't do that (yet). This brings it all together.
Thanks, Web!
