HDRI

[dbmk]

I tried messing about with HDRI yesterday.
For those thinking "HD..what?": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging">HDRI on Wikipedia

In short its cheating with the luminans levels and contrasts, to portray a larger spectrum of light than the equipment can really capture. Its all done in software written by smarter people than me. :) Mostly to show details in the darker and light parts of the picture.

I had to cheat a little a use one picture as the base and under and overexpose in postprocessing. The real process would be to shoot the same picture with the different exposures and then work on those. The result would/should be better that way. I will have to try and get some material for that one of these days.

Anyways; The result:
http://dabomb.dk/misc/HDR-test-03 (Its a pretty large picture (1 Mb), so I did not want to include it here. Add ".jpg" at the end to see it)
The picture on the left is taken directly from the RAW file, resized to 25%. The one on the right is the result of running the it and the (cheating) over and underexposed versions through Photomatix, with the effect set to pretty high - and some color enhancement.

If you want to read more about it, I have some links in my slowly starting photoblog here:
http://www.dabomb.dk/?p=5 (Its in danish, but you should be able to find the links. :) )

And there are many fantastic examples here:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=373150

The results vary a great deal between fantastic, weird and in some cases downright ugly - and the opinions about the entire thing are just as varied.
I think it can give some very fascinating pictures. But it can also easily be overdone.

But there you have it. If you were not aware of this, now you are, and if you were, you might have some examples yourself or an opinion on it. Either way, I would love to hear what you think about it.

[bvar22]

1. I've been playing with it.

I haven't been happy.
I'm using Corel PaintShop Pro X2 that has a "HDR Merge" function.

I've used in in attempts to merge a twilight sky over garden foreground.
I can use the bracket function on my camera and a tripod to catch the neon & purple twilight sky on one exposure, AND catch the garden in acceptable lighting in another exposure......
but merging those two into an acceptable HDR image capturing the best of both has been impossible so far.

The color shifting on the composite results is horrible, and so far, tweaking with Levels, saturation, or tone has only made things worse.

At this point, I'm going to blame the software.
Corel has very few options in dealing with the output iomage (only one "Clarity" slider).

HDR when done properly is stunning.