NYT article on HDR

rool said:
HDR looks awful 99% of the time.
I know, and it shouldn't be that way. Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape had a gut feeling it would be abused when he reviewed it.

It's like somebody created a Campbell's Soup Art plug-in and Flickr's seen an invasion of the Warhols. imVho, of course ;)
 
The problem with HDR is, if it is abused, it looks unreal. Thats OK of thats what you want. If used properly, HDR allows the photoghrapher to reproduce a scene that replicates the scene as perceived by the eye. The classic example is the sunset picture. RDR allows the scene to be reproduced with both the senset and the forground objects captured, just as the eye sees it. But if one goes too far with the technique, it looks fake.

One can go too far in photoshop in many ways. I can balance a cloudy day scene so it looks like a sunny day. I can change the color balance of a late afternoon shot and make it look like a mid-day shot. In fact, the auto white balance is always trying to do this whether I like it or not.

Used properly, HDR can produce some amazing pictures. However, mostly it produces strange pictures, cool to look at but....strange.

Plus, its a lot of work.

Rex
 
Back
Top Bottom