wrote:
Thanks for the advice. I will give it some thought, but am leaning towards HDR at this point.
Also, I will continue to press for a newer, better camera!
I am familiar with HDR and use it a lot. The first rule is to never use HDR if you can use something else. The second rule is to NOT use Photoshop’s nature HDR, but spend the money on Photomatix Pro.
The reason to use HDR is to capture the full dynamic exposure range of scenes that have too much dynamic range for your camera. i.e. Use it when you have to get tone in both the highlights and the shadows and they are too far apart for your camera to record that.
The sun poking through the clouds after a storm might be a situation like this. Where the storm still is would be pretty dark and the sunlight would be very bright. The sun shooting into a thick, dark forest would also be a situation like this.
I’ve shot most of my HDR pictures inside churches. I’ve been selling lighting to churches and first do a survey that includes panoramic HDR pictures of the inside. I need to capture detail in the light fixtures, the stained glass windows, the clear windows (somewhat), and all the dark corners of the church. This is way beyond the exposure range of any digital camera.
So, I shoot 5 to 7 exposures of each angle that are 2 full stops apart. Then I move my pano head on the tripod over to the next overlapping angle and shoot 5 to 7 more exposures. The number of exposures is regulated by what I get. I’m trying to get detail in my little screen from the darkest to the lightest. Usually it takes 5 to 7 exposure. One stop apart is well within the dynamic range of the camera and therefore a waste. Three stops between was just a little too much in my experience. (BTW, I do the Photomatix Pro work before stitching in The Panoramic Factory.)
Notice that the key is that this pretty much has to be on a tripod to get all the exposures lined up well. It also eliminates moving subjects. That takes care of using HDR for wedding photography to capture the bride’s white dress and the groom’s black tux. So, it is a very limiting photographic process.
I’ve never got a workable result with Photoshop’s HDR. I’ve never heard of anyone else successing with Photoshop’s HDR either. I finally bought Photomatix Pro and spent a lot of time trying out all the many variables. It will take some time. (Do a Google Groups search for my long experiences on this.)
A big problem with getting good HDR that many people have is trying to use HDR on scenes that don’t need HDR. They come out looking like crap. They are very flat and dull. They reason for this is that this process is for pulling a very wide exposure range down into a range that our monitors and printers can use. It flattens High Dynamic Range scenes down into color spaces that we can use in Photoshop, on monitors, on printers, and actually for our own eyes. (The eyes things is complicated science.) If you use this tool on scenes that don’t need it, it will still flatten the dynamic range. It will also make it way too flat.
Remember that you are really trying to flatten any picture only to the point that you get maximum black and maximum white on some point in the picture. If your RAW mode on your camera will do that anyway, you’ll be much better off using that. If your have to use HDR, set the setting to get the broadest histogram that is within the extremes. You are still wanting black (or close to it) and white (or close to it) in your picture. Flattening beyond that will usually create ugly pictures.
Another warning is that colors don’t stay "true" when using this process. If you shoot a room with a window and a light in it, it will flatten the exposure range of both to be about the same. However, it does this with exposures that overlap. All digital cameras have their own characteristics of how they capture color. They don’t do that exactly the same way for different exposures. Part of the reason for this is that the color of light is viewed by humans very differently at different intensities. Camera makers try very hard to get colors that we think we see.
However, when you Tone Map these different exposures into one, you will get color shifts. In some pictures it won’t be much, particularly if you don’t have a lot of different colors of light. In others it will be very noticeable, but not bad from an artistic perspective. Some will shift and look just plain wrong too. Frankly, I haven’t found a way around this and I don’t think there is one. It is something to be aware of though.
HDR is a great tool to use when you absolutely have to have it. If there is anyway to not use it, stay with that way. If you have to have it, nothing else will usually do the trick. The results can be very good and very beautiful. There are plenty of pitfalls along the way that can ruin the picture though. Good luck.
Thanks,
Clyde
