HDR Photography-The Amazing and Treacherous World of High Dynamic Range Photography

The advent of digital photography has brought revolution after revolution. As I’ve said before, generally, in the days of film what you got in the negative or slide was pretty much what you were stuck with. One problem with photography then and now, but especially in the days of film, is  the limited dynamic range, also referred to as exposure latitude. When we view a scene with our amazing eyes, we can see detail in the darkest shadows and the brightest highlights virtually in the same instant. We can discern a dynamic range on the order of 25:1. Our eyes adjust so rapidly that we don’t even notice this amazing ability. In photography, the range we can capture is greatly reduced. With film it was on the order of 9:1, or 9 f stops. When making a print, this range is reduced even farther to somewhere on the order of only 4 f stops.  The great photographic master, Ansel Adams, based his entire method on maximizing the dynamic range he could capture on film and in print. He did this by over or under exposing the film in combination with applying specialized developing techniques using various chemical developers and developing times. He would then manipulate his prints by dodging and burning areas and again, in combination with developing techniques and chemicals, to extend the apparent dynamic range of a photograph. These were complicated techniques. All, to create a photograph that matched his imagination and hold detail in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. This was the holy grail in the hey day of black and white photography.
 
Enter the world of digital photography. Now, my sensor has a greater latitude than film somewhere on the order of eleven f stops. But still, it doesn’t come close to the capability of the human eye. And you also have the problem of the lesser latitude of photographic paper.HDR to the rescue: high dynamic range photography. Now we can capture three, five, seven or nine, or even 21 different exposures from very dark to extremely bright and merge them all in HDR software. This creates an image that combines all the details of the blackest blacks and whitest whites in a single frame.

So what are the steps to creating an HDR photo?

First, it’s imperative that you use a tripod. I’ve tried to do it hand-held, but shooting a series of bracketed exposures even shooting at five frames a second will inevitably have movement between each frame.

Next, you need your series of bracketed exposures. This means that you have to shoot the high contrast scene you’ve chosen with those three, five or seven different exposure settings ranging from very under-exposed to very over-exposed. 

These are the five brackets I used to create the photo at the top of this post:

-2 stops

-1 stop

Normal

+1 Stop

+ 2 Stops

       Many cameras have the capability to automatically bracket exposures. This makes things much easier. Without auto-bracketing, you have to manually adjust your exposure between each photo.

Some consumer cameras, especially point and shoot cameras, can now create HDR photos automatically in the camera.

I usually set my camera to do five brackets with a one f stop difference between brackets. This five f stop range from under-exposure, to capture detail in the brightest highlights, to overexposure, to capture the details of the darkest shadows, is usually sufficient.

I said above that you can do even more brackets. You can get crazy with them shooting fifteen brackets at intervals of 1/3 of a stop, but I haven’t found much advantage to that.

You first have to establish you median exposure. You do this by using your histogram as in this blog post:

http://dreamcatcherimaging.blogspot.com/2013/07/understanding-camera-histograms-in.html

After that, set your auto-bracketing and make your exposures. You can use your fingers like in the Panorama post to mark the beginning and end of your brackets: 

http://dreamcatcherimaging.blogspot.com/2013/07/panorama-photography-photographing-and.html

      But after importing the photos, it’s usually pretty obvious what photos you’ve shot for HDR.

And another thing, I always shoot my exposures from under-exposed to over-exposed, from - to +. With auto-bracketing, it’s a setting on the camera. It makes it easier and more obvious which photos I will use to create the high dynamic range photograph.

Once you’ve imported the photos, you need an HDR program to process them. Photoshop has HDR capability, but I prefer either Photomatix or Nik’s HDR Efex Pro. Photomatix and HDR Efex are plugins for programs like Lightroom and Aperture as well as Photoshop and the latest versions of Photoshop Elements. You can export from these program directly into the plugin.

I won’t get into the process of working with the software here, I just want to introduce you to the basic steps. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of things you can do while manipulating your images in the HDR software. Both Photomatix and HDR Efex have presets, kind of like recipes. By clicking on each preset, you’ll get very different looks. These can be fine-tuned with the controls in the software. And as always, just play and have fun. You can’t screw up.

As I said in the title, you’ll be amazed with what you can create. But...there is a treacherous side as well. It’s very easy to become enamored with the saturation, detail and bizarre looks you can achieve with HDR photography.
  The internet is full of clumsy, why-to-obvious, and ridiculously over-saturated HDR photos. The challenge is to use HDR subtlety and to create photographs that mirror the reality or convey the feelings you had when you were inspired to photograph the scene in the first place.

      I shot the exposures for this HDR photograph during a Vail Nature Center Photography Workshop on Shrine Pass. Clouds frequently present a problem because their brightest highlights get blasted out especially when there are some deeper shadows to deal with. I made five exposures but I only used these three brackets to create the HDR photo.

Here is the final image:

And just to compare the capability of today's cameras and processing software, here is the middle bracket processed in Lightroom 5 only:

You can see that the clouds show much greater texture and the shadow somewhat lower contrast. Which do you like? Well, it's a matter of taste.

Copyright 2013 Dennis Jones/Dreamcatcher Imaging

http://www.dreamcatcherimaging.com

Check out my travel blogs on my extensive world travels at:

http://www.dreamcatcherimaging.com/blog/

JPEG vs TIFF vs RAW Which Photo File Format to Choose?

These are the three main image file formats. Different uses require different file formats. The web, for example, requires a JPEG. If you have a point and shoot, likely, your only choice is JPEG.

Jpeg is a compressed image file. The camera decides which pixels are important in an image and compresses the image to a smaller size file as it’s being processed.

In other words, the camera processes the image, making it look as good as it can, and throws away lots of pixels it doesn’t need. It does a great job in figuring out what’s important but it does throw away information forever. 

Another disadvantage of jpegs is that if you work on a jpeg and make changes to it, say brightening it or giving it more contrast of saturation or putting it through a filter, each time you save it, more pixels are thrown away. An advantage, is that pretty much any imaging software can work with jpegs and they don’t take up much storage space.

TIFF is an uncompressed format. It’s a great format to use when making changes to an image after processing because all the information is saved. You can also set many cameras to capture in TIFF. Again, most software can work with TIFFs.

RAW is the most flexible format to capture in. Every bit of the information is contained in a RAW file. All professional cameras and most prosumer cameras can shoot in RAW. To complicate things, every manufacturer has their own propriatory RAW format; .nef for Nikon, .crd for Canon, .ref for Fuji, etc.. The camera doesn’t process the RAW image at all. You’ve gotta process it yourself. You do this in one of the many cataloging programs out there, either a manufactorer’s propriatary program like Nikon’s Capture NX or something like Apple’s Aperture, Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw.

If you’re serious about your photography, then you’ll shoot in RAW, period! It’s got every pixel of information you can use in the image file. Why would I shoot in JPEG and let the camera decide what’s important when I can shoot in RAW? And, I’ve  got to process the image no matter which format I use.

Plus, a RAW file has much more exposure latitude than the severly limited JPEG. 

In other words, you can increase or decrease the exposure, (lighten or darken the image), during processing to a far greater extent with a RAW file without stretching the pixels beyond their breaking point. Yes, it’s possible to break pixels, especially if they’ve been thrown away and aren’t even there!

Another thing, you don’t actually make changes to the RAW file. Through what’s called Metadata, you tell the software how to manipulate the file so it looks the way you want it to look. This is called non-destructive processing. If your artistic tastes change later, you can always go back and make more changes to the original file without a single pixel being damaged in the process.

And, you can save different versions of the photograph, say a really saturated version or a black and white version. These, you would save as a tiff for maximum quality. When I use some of my software plugin filters, I save the result as a TIFF. 

I can convert both RAW and TIFF files easily into JPEGs for use on the web or for emailing or to send to a lab that requires JPEGs for printing without effecting the original file. I also export files as JPEGs for slide shows, video or Powerpoint presentations because the high resolution and size of RAW and TIFF files is pointless in these relatively low rez products and can gum up the works.

So, what format should you use?

If all you're doing is posting online, emailing your photos to friends, sharing them with family, or making small prints for albums, jpegs will do just fine. But...if you’re serious about your photography, shoot only RAW.

Copyright 2013 Dennis Jones/Dreamcatcher Imaging

www.dreamcatcherimaging.com

Check out my travel blogs on my extensive world travels at:

www.dreamcatcherimaging.com/blog

Establish an Easy Method for Cataloging Your Photos

Nothing is more important when dealing with photographs than developing an easy system for cataloging your photos. It’s very frustrating, not to mention time consuming, trying to find a photo you want to share or have printed when you have a haphazard filing system. Worse yet, with no system at all. And, it is a very simple thing to set up.

By default, when you download photos from your camera or memory card, they are inevitably and automatically put into a folder with a date. To me, this is the worst kind of catalog. I have no idea what I was doing on say, September 29, 2011, let alone what photos are in the folder.

If this is your filing system, you’ve got to open every folder from around the time you think the photographs were taken to find what you’re looking for. What a pain.

No matter what software you are using to catalog your images or how you are storing them on your computer, it is an easy matter to import your photos into a folder with a name that is associated with your subject as you download them.

For example, all my pictures go into one main folder, My Pictures, and no where else. Within My Pictures, I have a folder called Friends. These are friends we’ve visited or have visited us and all the photos I’ve taken of friends go into this folder. But it doesn’t stop there. I have sub-folders of the Friends folder to hold the photos of each set of friends. You can also make sub-folders of these that relate to specific events, places visits or even dates or years.

If I’m looking for a photo of say, Jim and Ginny Jinks that I shot while visiting them in Florida, it takes a couple of clicks and there it is.

The same method works great with our families. First, I have a folder named Family. Underneath that are sub-folders named for the families and family members. Events like Christmas and Thanksgiving are in their sub-folders listed by the year.

Yolanda’s grand-daughters have been in several plays, so in the sub-folder of Family named Skylar and Sage, I have sub-folders for each play.

It’s so easy. But you have to be consistent.

We travel a lot. So, I have a Travel folder. (Not to mention my travel blog, Light Traveler, www.dreamcatcherimaging.com/blog.) In my Travel folder are sub-folders of the countries. Under that, sub-folders of the cities or regions. If I’ve been somewhere more than once, there’s a folder for the year and then the city.

Of course, if you’re like me, you’ll have several different places or things on your CF or SD card that don’t fit neatly into one category. Plus, after I download them, I have to edit through them and delete the photos I don’t want. For that, I have a folder under my main photo folder named Newest Downloads. All the mixed up stuff goes in there until I have time to edit through and process it. Then, it only takes a few minutes to either drag them to the appropriate folder or create a new folder and drag them there.

I don’t care what software you use or where you have them stored on your computer, it’s a simple matter to set up an easy to use filing system. If you haven’t already set one up, then it’ll take some time to organize it. But once set up, it only takes a few seconds to put things where you’ll be able to find them.

If you don’t have the time or patience to organize the photographs you already have, then at least set up a filing system for the new photos you take and use it from now on. It’s so easy.

But if you’re one of those who keep hundreds or thousands of shots on a card until it fills up, store it and buy a new card. Heaven help you.

Here’s a screen capture of part of my Travel folder:

Copyright 2013 Dennis Jones/Dreamcatcher Imaging

www.dreamcatcherimaging.com

Check out my travel blogs on my extensive world travels at:

www.dreamcatcherimaging.com/blog