w/nw HDR!

[jingles_97]

Let's celebrate non gear day with stuff that you normally wouldn't dare to post on RFF.

Coastal Maine under very heavy morning fog.

 

[Jack Conrad]

I would never post this here... 😱

 

[chambrenoire]

(Hi-res here).

Bought a Nikon D70 anno 2006. This was my first go at HDR 🙂

 

[ederek]

First HDR, will have to process again - don't quite have the hang of this stuff. Subject seemed appropriate...

 

[daninjc]

my eyes are already bleeding
🙂

 

[arpy]

OMG, I've fallen into the fake-HDR trap a few (too many) times. :angel:

Meanwhile
some bits from my last trip
of that kind:

The Central Europe à la Far East.

The local pond à la siberian taiga.

 

[tapesonthefloor]

Minolta CLE, M-Rokkor 40mm, Ilford HP5+, Ilfosol 3.

When I first got this scan back the dynamic range took my breath away.

Amidoinitrite?

 

[venchka]

Say it ain't so! I avoid these threads on the digi-forums.
Someday, maybe soon, folks won't feel the need to include those dreaded letters with their images. We can hope.
Did anyone ever add: Underexposed, Overdeveloped, Dodged & Burned with their analog photos? Huh?
One clue for the digi-dynamic range challenged: LR/Enfuse Plugin.

 

[Keith]

In a previous thread about HDR imaging some comic came up with one of the best one liners in a post I've seen here!

"Son ... put the camera down down and step away from the acronym!"

Personally I don't have a problem with it but people abuse it ... some of the stuff I've stumbled over on flickr is repulsive!

 

[cliffpov]

Dumb question but what is HDR? Maybe someone else is wondering as well.

 

[jingles_97]

HDR = High Dynamic Range, meaning to record a scene where its dynamic range exceeds that of the recording device (film/sensor) and/or the playback device (prints/monitor). One would usually bracket the exposure of the same scene by several +/- stops, and combine them digitally in one final image that has all the details in both highlights and shadows. However, before displaying the image on a regular play back device such as prints and monitors which have very low dynamic range, once has to reduce the contrast of the HDR image either globally or locally. Tonemapping is a computer software algorithm that is popular for this purpose. However, careless Tonemapping will produce artifacts such as halos around dark object and high saturation which many of the RFFers find repulsive. However in itself HDR/Tonemapping should be considered a valuable technique in a digital photographer's arsenal.

Check wikipedia on HDR and tonemapping for more details.

One can also use a single raw file to generate an HDR and tonemap it. Here is an example.
Original from Raw:
http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu238/shinytickles/HDR/sample1original.jpg

Tonemapped HDR with +/- 2v processing from the raw file
http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu238/shinytickles/HDR/sample1hdr.jpg

Photoshop 5% highlight/shadow tone compressed image from the original raw output
http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu238/shinytickles/HDR/sample1highlight.jpg

See which one you like the best.

 

[ederek]

jingles_97 - ^^ that is EXACTLY the type of processing I want to achieve! I have no interest in the fake stuff (such as my post), I just want to increase the dynamic range several stops.

One clue for the digi-dynamic range challenged: LR/Enfuse Plugin.

Is that app better than the HDR merge built into CS5? Installed it last night but can only go 500 pix wide until sending in donation. Just want to know if it's worth it..

 

[cliffpov]

Thanks for the explanation Jingles. I honestly thought the original was best but I had to look at each photo several times as I didn't see a whole lot of difference in any of them. Thanks again.

 

[greyelm]

 

[jingles_97]

Cliff, I noticed the graphic engines in different browers or even websites can have different rendering of the same jpg image. It's weird. When I hot linked these 3 images through RFF, they look pretty much the same, but when I open them individually in different tabs, the difference is more pronounced.

anyway here is the difference I see on my 23" samsung monitor.
image 1: very smooth rendering of a dusk scene.

image 2: noticably more detail in cloud highlights (upper left) and in the shadows (inside the dumpster). a slightly increased contrast/saturation throughout the image.

image 3: noticably more detail in cloud highlights (upper left) and in the shadows (inside the dumpster). but with a decreased contrast throughout the image and an ever so slight halo around Sears Tower.

The goal here is to retrieve more details in highlights and shadows while preserving contrast. But people do tend to overuse the tonemapping feature to generate surreal images, because of the initial wow factor.

By the way the HDR tonemapping generated by Photomatix 3.1.2