Tuesday, May 10, 2011

a bit more on HDR

Manual shooting for an HDR exposure is pretty simple. As the images need to be the same, a tripod is very nearly required. Photoshop will adjust for slight variations but not much. I use the manual setting and adjust for the images from there. I get one good reference shot; ISO, Shutter speed, and apurture. Then varying the shutter speed to collect the images to use in creating the HDR image. Shoot underexposed and overexposed. The number of shots must be at least 3 with one being the proper exposure. So far I've found 5 to be workable. In Photoshop go to file> Automate> merge to HDR and then choose the images you want to combine. The more images you use, the longer it will take PS to complete the image. I am still experimenting with how many and which exposures, 1/2 stops, full stops. I suspect I'll find using different stops will be useful depending on the eventual photo I want to create. Lighting, dynamic range, detail, all play a part.

Once the images are combined in PS there are several setting available in the HDR mode. You can see from the previous blog that each of the photos were "developed" with varying degrees of each of the setting available. As in the Camera Raw program, there are slider controls to create the image that you want. The Photosig website has many images created in HDR software.

http://www.photosig.com/go/photos/browse?id=45047

As you view some of these photos on Photosig, you might find that this effect can be wildly overdone, lol.

The Nikon D300 (what I use) can be set up to fine a present number of shots at different stops (shutter speeds). I still haven't quite figured that out yet. When I do, I'll post the instructions here.

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