HDR - This is my very first HDR photo ever...I'm stoked! For those of you that don't know what an HDR photo is, it stands for High Dynamic Range. Basically you take different exposures of the same scene to make a single photo that has both defined highlights and shadows. A result like this is usually impossible with only a single photo due to the limitations of the cameras themselves. For those that know HDR, I know it's not Chromasia quality, but it's a start. I haven't really been a fan of HDR because most of the time people go overboard and the results look too cartoonish. Although, I appreciate HDR because there are a lot of times when the camera just doesn't have the dynamic range needed to make a clean photo. So here it is...Storke Tower - This is the main tower and the symbol for UCSB (University of California Santa Barbara). This was a combination of 5 photos all taken on a tripod...I've never HDR'd before so I kept it simple...I brought it all into Photomatix and let it do its magic. It's an easy program...just slap in the jpegs and you're good...it has a lot of options to change the "cartoonishness" of the photo...I tried to keep this shot dynamic but not too cartoonish...any thoughts...well hope you like this pic and I'd definitely recommend trying HDR if you have a tripod. Photomatix is cheap too...
(Update) - Some people have asked to see what the pics looked like before I did the HDR conversion. Well here they are...
Click the image to see a larger version. These were not post-processed in anyway other than putting them together in a jpeg. As you can see i took 5 different pics, each at a different exposure. Each exposure was exactly 1EV above the previous image. There was no way to get the clouds exposed properly and the tower exposed properly all in one shot. This is why HDR is so cool. You can combine all the different pics together and the software figures out what to keep and what to discard to make a balanced photo. I hope this helps and if anyone has any other questions, let me know.
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Hi..I like the sky in the picture, it looks great.
ReplyDeleteI did't understand what HDR is ...but after I read about HDR for the first time in ur post..I found it in other sites and it seems like a professional thing.
I have a Canon xs100 i..can I use it to make a HDR Photo?
thanks for the post...I checked out the Canon XS100 and it looks like it has a manual mode...in that case you should be able to take different exposures like I did with my 5D. In the shot above I took 5 different exposures, each 1EV from one another. Also, make sure to set your white balance manually. The camera may try to change the colors on you, but if you set it manually you won't get color shifts. Lastly, make sure you have a steady tripod and you should be good...let me know how your HDRs come out...
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