don moorcroft
Dining room in HDR
Over the weekend I learned about the existence of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, and decided I just had to try it out. After a few false starts, I came up with this. Not a particularly wonderful picture, but I was pleased to find that using hdr deals with a problem which made me want to try it: the bright light shining in the window makes photographing the interior in this direction very difficult. In this photograph it is possible to see everything - the flowers, the reflections on the table and from the piano, as well as the trees and shrubs in the garden outside.
For anyone who doesn't already know, the idea of HDR is to take several photos of the same scene at different exposures, so as to capture the full dynamic range of the scene. These multiple photographs can then be combined in software to produce an (undisplayable) hdr image with the full dynamic range. That image can then be 'tone mapped' to produce a displayable realization of the hdr image, such as this one. I was amazed to find that this scene actually has a dynamic range of over 500,000:1, and I combined 12 photos at 1-stop intervals to get this result.
Personally I was disappointed to find that most (but not all) of the photographs in the HDR groups have a hyper-realistic appearance, where all the edges are sharper, all the colours more intense, etc., than in real life. It can be very impressive, but its not to my taste.
Dining room in HDR
Over the weekend I learned about the existence of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, and decided I just had to try it out. After a few false starts, I came up with this. Not a particularly wonderful picture, but I was pleased to find that using hdr deals with a problem which made me want to try it: the bright light shining in the window makes photographing the interior in this direction very difficult. In this photograph it is possible to see everything - the flowers, the reflections on the table and from the piano, as well as the trees and shrubs in the garden outside.
For anyone who doesn't already know, the idea of HDR is to take several photos of the same scene at different exposures, so as to capture the full dynamic range of the scene. These multiple photographs can then be combined in software to produce an (undisplayable) hdr image with the full dynamic range. That image can then be 'tone mapped' to produce a displayable realization of the hdr image, such as this one. I was amazed to find that this scene actually has a dynamic range of over 500,000:1, and I combined 12 photos at 1-stop intervals to get this result.
Personally I was disappointed to find that most (but not all) of the photographs in the HDR groups have a hyper-realistic appearance, where all the edges are sharper, all the colours more intense, etc., than in real life. It can be very impressive, but its not to my taste.