HDR photography

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Permalink Reply by Leanne Hamilton on February 16, 2009 at 6:19am

Its like marmite, some people hate it, some love it, At the end of the day in my opinion you still have to have a good eye and photographer know how to produce a good set of images to be used as HDR, I dont think all shots work well in HDR but certain things really can look wiked.. im all for it :)

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Permalink Reply by Bert Corliss on February 16, 2009 at 7:32am

First, Lets look at a definition:

High dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

The HDR images I've seen that really hold to this definition are great. They are normally have very sharp detail and definition.

The problem I've seen, is to much of the time the image are becoming high saturation images and not high definition.

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Permalink Reply by SoCal Island Girl on February 16, 2009 at 10:10am

It is an interesting subject you raised. I think at some point if you push the limits with HDR photography, it does transcend the genre and becomes art. Many fine art photographers find HDR an interesting addition to their work tool kit. A little HDR would probably be acceptable in mainstream photography. HDR allows digital photographers to accomplish what Velvia slide films are able to do if they do not want to stay with slide film. Howeverm the depth and color spectrum of Velvia in my opinion is still unmatched and will be hard to replace even with HDR.

I did some HDRs recently, used Photomatix, pushed the envelope a little and like what I see so far. I would call the ones I pushed the limits more art than photography though. I did minimal HDR tone mapping on some and on a selected few I decided they will be better as art and pushed the limit further. They are posted on my website and you can find them via my website link on my shutterspace profile.

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Permalink Reply by tressillian on February 16, 2009 at 7:04pm

To me it's just another post-shot art form. I think there are two main dimensions to HDR:

1. Simple "improvement" of a photo by Increasing the dynamic range - this, I think, is simply a technique to improve a photo like sharpening, noise-reduction, boosting satuartion, etc.

2. Substantial modification of a shot - towards a "comic-book" effect. This is a new form of art in itself - but by no means devalues the photographic process , the skill of the photographer or the skill of the HDRer.

I generally don't do HDR - mainly because I don't seem to be skilled enough to get results that I'm happy with!

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Permalink Reply by Brian on February 17, 2009 at 10:05am

I really like HDR for city landscapes and automotive photography, but this is one of those Coke or Pepsi questions. Some people think HDR undermines photography, some people think Photoshop undermines photography, and some people think digital cameras undermine photography. Don't worry about the purist, if you like the technique go for it. I would recommend surfing the Internet for tons of examples though. HDR can produce anything from a nice landscape with a wider range of color to something that looks like a cartoon.

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