HDR ~ A Picture Tutorial...

HDR ~ A Picture Tutorial...
I will be the first to admit, I am not the best photographer here in the rain. There are many that are far, far better. However; having spent 46 years wandering behind the lens, this old dog has learned a trick or two. I have been asked by several to write brief a tutorial about HDR (high dynamic range) photography and tone mapping. While everyone who uses this technology may have differing methods and techniques, this works best for me.

Driving to the office yesterday morning, I was captivated by the brilliant sun rise (above). Knowing that this would be the last I'd see the sun before getting dump on by more of the "white fluff" I stopped the car and grabbed my gear.

The first shot I took was a "0" refrence shot. The purpose is to find the "0" balance in manual or aperture priority mode so you can bracket your shots starting at +2/3, +1/3, 0, -1/3 and -2/3. You don't have to shoot 5 like I do, you can shoot 3. Make sure your camera is mounted on a tripod and shoot odd increments.

I like to use Photomatrix as it has a batch utility to pre-process all your photos and save them in a separate folder using what specifications you set. I will not get into this in this tutorial. I suggest you use the "default" settings. You can adjust them later.

Loading the pre-processed shots is short of glamorous. Clicking on Tone Mapping brings up your working canvas. From here, the Leonardo in you can "massage" the bracketed/merged photos to your desired tastes and effects by adjusting the sliders. DO NOT enter a number and hit enter. This starts the processing and you will have to start all over. Hopefully, the software engineers will work on this.

Once you have finished "tweaking" click "Process" at the bottom and the computer generates your masterpiece. As a side note, you may want to load the final processed picture into another photo editor to sharpen the picture. Photomatics does not have that feature.

Like any photography process, there will be goofs. Not to worry. Practice makes perfect. Digital film is cheap, and there is always the round circular file to dump your, "aw craps". I hope you have found this helpful.