HDR with film camera?

literiter

literiter

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I've been impressed with the appearance of digital photos shot in HDR.

I'm curious if anyone has tried, or had success using film + scanner + Photoshop to achieve this effect.

I will try it myself using XP-2 at different settings soon anyway, as soon as the snow (!) clears but I'd like to hear from others.
 
Apart from personally finding HDR a process for turning photos into cartoons, its not possible to produce an HDR image from a single frame of film. With a decent scanning all information can be captured in a single pass. For C41 films, like XP2, your maximum density range is only about 2.0
 
Many scanners can do multiple exposures now. Personally, I find a scanned frame of Neopan has more dynamic range than can be displayed on a screen, let alone a paper print. Something always has to go off the brightness scale, or be compressed, to make the contrast look natural.
 
rogerzilla said:
Many scanners can do multiple exposures now.
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For slide film with densities around 4.0+ this can make sense. Furthermore, each doubling of the passes gains you an additional bit of information here.

Personally, I find a scanned frame of Neopan has more dynamic range than can be displayed on a screen, let alone a paper print. Something always has to go off the brightness scale, or be compressed, to make the contrast look natural.
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I dont understand how you loose anything on a screen display of a scan. Film by its nature is always going to compress the dynamic range but your density, especially for negatives is not going to be an issue at all.
 
craygc said:
Apart from personally finding HDR a process for turning photos into cartoons, its not possible to produce an HDR image from a single frame of film. With a decent scanning all information can be captured in a single pass. For C41 films, like XP2, your maximum density range is only about 2.0
Click to expand...

I was considering doing two and then three different exposures with XP-2 perhaps using my F4s (motor drive) or even my Hasselblad if I can secure the thing on a tripod well enough. I'll try 1/2 and 1 stops either side of the meter reading and see what happens.

I can't personally see what will be gained by this exercise but I've never heard of anyone trying it before.

Tomorrow is Sunday and hopefully I have the time to try it.
 
perhaps not "true HDR" with 1 shot, but HDR looking photos can be had by using one of these methods:

1. With a single exposure, preferably raw and without blown highlights, make 2 copies, one about -2EV ish, one +2 EV ish.

Merge them in photomatix (light trial version is free).

2. Just drop a single image scan into photomatix light and play with the sliders. You can get very subtle to cartoonish. The "painterly" and "compressor" effects can be interesting.
 
Why make life difficult. HP5 can capture upwards of 15 stops of range on the film. Just don't use any kind of compensating developer. Then providing you expose for the shadows you only need to adjust levels on one scan instead of merging several scanned negatives.

And because you only need one shot, you don't have to do it on a tripod.
 
tlitody said:
Why make life difficult. HP5 can capture upwards of 15 stops of range on the film. Just don't use any kind of compensating developer. Then providing you expose for the shadows you only need to adjust levels on one scan instead of merging several scanned negatives.

And because you only need one shot, you don't have to do it on a tripod.
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Much thanks!! I think I even have a roll of 120.
 
Density has nothing to do with it. Negatives and slides convert scene luminance to density in different, nonlinear ways. A piece of litho film may have a Dmax of 6.0, but it may only represent one stop of latitude. Anything over or under that stop will be completely white or black. So density is really a red herring.

In reality, just about any negative film is HDR. Unlike digital, you don't need to take multiple shots to capture a phenomenally huge range of subject brightness.

Take this image, for example:


With digital, the highlights on the subjects' faces would be slightly blown out, and the brightest part of the sky would be completely blown out. But with film, all of that information is there. You can prove it by bringing the blown out areas back down to normal:
marcstoppeddown.jpg


Totally impossible with digital. Very, very easy with C41.
 
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bensyverson said:
Density has nothing to do with it. Negatives and slides convert scene luminance to density in different, nonlinear ways. A piece of litho film may have a Dmax of 6.0, but it may only represent one stop of latitude. Anything over or under that stop will be completely white or black. So density is really a red herring.

In reality, just about any negative film is HDR. Unlike digital, you don't need to take multiple shots to capture a phenomenally huge range of subject brightness.
Click to expand...

It does of course depend on how you are going to use the neg/pos. If wet printing to B+W paper using an enlarger, then that huge range of capture is very difficult, if not impossible to handle because B+W paper range is only able to deal with around 1.5 logD of the negative. If you are scanning then the scanner should easily cope with 3.0 logD and possibly upto 4.0 with a good scanner which is why what I suggest should work. The neg density should be well within that for a 15 stop subject range if development is right.

The only caveat to this is how well the scanner will scan B+W film at for example, 2.5logD. Could look quite grainy. Colour film is different cos the dye is translucent.
 
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tlitody said:
Yes but if you are scanning then do you need to worry about N+ and N- development? I think not.
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IMHO if you are scanning you should save the pictures in TIFF 16 bit in order to have a maximum of informations in the files; in my photo apps TIFF 16 bit are better than jpeg for tonemapping, smartblend or other digital process.
 
It's simple actually.
A single scan of a single negative. 16-bit TIFF input. Lightroom. Multiple virtual copies. Exposure adjustment for each virtual copy. Combine with Lightroom Enfuse. 16-bit TIFF output. Totally natural look.

Digital HDR software is capable of natural output. The problem is operator error. Pushing sliders into the Twilight Zone. Oloneo PhotoEngine has promise for natural rendention. However, it will not work with TIFF files from film. Too bad.
 
Digital HDR is a method of capturing the kind of dynamic range with a digital camera that approximates what is possible with film.

If one wished, one could apply the same technique to film by exposing a series of shots at a range of exposures. Then scan all the shots and manipulate/combine the same way you would if the shots were taken by a digital camera.
 
Here is an example of HDR with film. Shot this with a Mamiya 7ii and 65mm lens. I used the Lightroom "virtual Copy" technique described above. I think it turned out pretty good, and I'm satisfied with it.

HDR is just another tool. Since it's hard to use Grad ND's with a film rangefinder, I find bracketing exposures and combining via HDR is a viable solution. And...sometimes it's just fun to try things and see what's possible.

Cheers,

Jeff

2011-11008_HDR_PS_Warp_Edit.jpg

Chora Church, Istanbul; Mamiya 7ii, 65mm Wide Angle, Kodak Portra 400
 
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