HDR Photography.....anyone else into it?

[GreenLantern]

Originally Posted by Tron_fdc

I hear ya on the overdone post production. The thing that is stifling me is what to do with all the buttons and controls, I have no idea what combo works best with certain exposures. Supposedly it's trial and error, but I'd really like to find an online tutorial of some sort.

Tron where were you in the baby clubbing seal thread.

We needed your avatar man.

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...07#post1760207

I see now that it was locked before you got a chance to contribute, a thousand pardons my lord.

[kobafett]

This isn't HDR but I think I will post it here anyway. This is a project I'm working on that has a lot of post production done on it. I still have some more to do on it but here is a before and after.


Original



Retouched

[Tron_fdc]

Jayems, that photo of the locomotive in front of the mountain is awesome. Is that at the spiral tunnels?

[Madman]

Put me in the boat of "Too Cartoonish". Sure, some HDR looks pretty cool - but there is no way they are "photos" to me anymore.

Photography nowadays seems to be less about taking a great picture and more about how much crap can I add on in Photoshop or other software after the fact.

Why does everything have to be post-processed to death?

[kobafett]

I really have no idea when a photo stops being a photo anymore. Is a photo something that is straight out of the camera? It would have to be the raw image because if you shoot jpeg the processor in the camera is changing what was really saw. Is it still a photo if you take it into photoshop and only adjust the curves?

It was easier to tell when we all shot film but you could still develop the film differently to get a different look. Ansel Adams would use techniques in the darkroom to get a much darker sky and add contrast.

HDR is a technique to get a higher dynamic range in your photo and not a look. I'm not a photojournalist. I'm going to use whatever technique is available to get the best final photo I can. That also includes getting it the best I can in camera too.

Do I make photos or something else, I guess that is up to the viewer decide but I hope they judge my photos on what they see not what techniques I might have used.

[BlackEleven]

I'm not a purist when it comes to photos; I think post-processing software can add a lot to photos, but when the photo becomes more about the post-processing that the original photo, that's where I draw the line. It's a bit like adding spice to food. Done right it can make it taste better, but too much and all you taste is the spice and its ruined.

The bottom line for me is that if a photo looks like something I could conceivably see with my own eyes in real life, then to me its still a photo regardless of how many photoshop effects it has. If its completely unrealistic, then its something other than a photograph.

I think a perfectly edited photo is one that makes you question if it was edited at all.

[kobafett]

You said it much better than I did BlackEleven. Re-reading my post it sounds like I went on a bit of a rant.

[SebC]

My first impressions of HDR was that it was for scenes where you can't capture the shot without washing out the brights or losing the shadows. So capture both and blend them. I don't get the appeal behind making daytime skies look way too dark, but I do understand why you would want them to be blue instead of white.

I see it more as something you would use to get excessive overall contrast into a normal range, than to create excessive local contrast from a normal picture. Am I completely wrong?

[kobafett]

Originally Posted by SebC

My first impressions of HDR was that it was for scenes where you can't capture the shot without washing out the brights or losing the shadows. So capture both and blend them. I don't get the appeal behind making daytime skies look way too dark, but I do understand why you would want them to be blue instead of white.

This is what I believe HDR was designed for and why I use HDR. A large number of the HDR photos I create are ones where I'm shooting into the sunset or sunrise and want to retain detail in the foreground elements. It's almost impossible to capture the scene with the dynamic range of the camera. I would either have to expose for the sun or for the foreground. I could use a graduated filter but the type of shots I do it would be hard to line it up.

If the photo doesn't need to be HDR I stick with the single exposure because it saves me time and I get a cleaner (less noise) image. Even though I'm never afraid to do a lot of post production I actually try and do as little as I can to get the image I want.

I hope I don't come off as acting like I'm some expert of photography because I'm not. Its just something I love to do and like sharing what I know.

[chid]

I think HDR is like a lot of photography tools, in the right context it is amazing. On certain landscapes I think HDR is breathtaking, but with a highly detailed or really busy photograph, I find it really looks way too cartoonish.

Has anyone gotten into using Topaz Adjust? I've played around with it and I'm amazed at some of the adjustments it can do to photos. I don't have it on my Mac but it'd be nice to have just to play around with at my home.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by kobafett

This is what I believe HDR was designed for and why I use HDR. A large number of the HDR photos I create are ones where I'm shooting into the sunset or sunrise and want to retain detail in the foreground elements. It's almost impossible to capture the scene with the dynamic range of the camera. I would either have to expose for the sun or for the foreground. I could use a graduated filter but the type of shots I do it would be hard to line it up.

If the photo doesn't need to be HDR I stick with the single exposure because it saves me time and I get a cleaner (less noise) image. Even though I'm never afraid to do a lot of post production I actually try and do as little as I can to get the image I want.

I hope I don't come off as acting like I'm some expert of photography because I'm not. Its just something I love to do and like sharing what I know.

Cool. That's interesting to me, because I don't always see that in your shots. E.g. "Searching for Spring": the sky was blue to begin with. You made it darker, less vibrant. That's not really what HDR is for, is it? Even Big Rock and Untitled, I can clearly see where you'd have lost detail with a single exposure, but why the dark skies? That's what I see as excessive local contrast. You're creating so much contrast in the sky that you're losing colour vs. what you'd have in a sky-metered exposure. They do look better on black though.

You're not coming of as condescending at all... your response was exactly the sort of think I'm looking for. I'm learning for you, so thanks for sharing!

I would like to try to put one together to show you what I think HDR should be. If I get one done, I'll share it with you.

[kobafett]

This is what I love about photography, there are all these rules to follow but in the end it comes down to the person viewing your photo to decide if it is good or not. I say that because where you see skies that are too dark I see them the way I think they should look.

Let me explain, Searching for Spring and Big Rock were taken almost at the moment where the sun was hitting the horizon either rising or setting. The sky was actually pretty dark when I took the photos and I wanted to retain the mood. I also darkened the foreground a bit on those two photos. The before photo for Searching for Spring is actually my base HDR, that is the image that I got from using photomatix. I usually end up with a pretty flat image because of the increased range. What I did after was take it into photoshop to return the color to what I remembered from the morning and add contrast back by darkening any areas that I feel need it.

So you are probably right that you wouldn't see great examples of HDR photography in my work because the HDR process is only the beginning for me. There is additional work after to fix the things that I don't like. Another example of this is the sky in untitled is not the sky that was created by HDR process but one of the exposures that I blended into the HDR image in photoshop because the HDR sky was to dramatic and didn't fit the photo.

LOL, I don't really do the view on black thing because I think they look good against a black background (it does help). I do it because when flickr resamples the images to create the smaller sizes it can do some pretty funky stuff to the images. I find the view on black uses your original size upload and usually is a much closer image to what you uploaded.

[kobafett]

Just for the sake of the discussion I went back in my archives from last year and pulled the original exposures for the big rock photo.

[SebC]

Alright, so I've tried one:



Used "tone compression" in Photomatix, mainly because the description of the process fits my understanding of HDR better.

These are the source files:





Probably not the best source images, but I don't have too many bracketed sets. Maybe I should try the sample files? The HDR is brighter than even the "bright" version I have, I presume because it's centering the exposure curve and all three of my photos are a bit dark (because it was appropriate, I think). Colour seems to have changed a bit, too. I think I was expecting it to be more of a composite than it turned out to be... it looks like a completely new image.

Now that I see your source files, I see what you're saying about retaining the mood for Big Rock.

[kobafett]

I have the same issues you had (brightness and colour change/over saturation) a lot with HDR. I think this is where people go wrong in their HDR processing because it's really easy to push those to the extremes, especially if you are trying to get your final image in the HDR software.

Sebc I really hope you don't mind. I did this up quickly as an example that I probably wouldn't have used HDR on this because merging the exposures in photoshop will require less work. I know you did this as an example of HDR but I thought it might be beneficial to show others another way.



Sebc, I have already deleted the files from my computer and will delete this if you are not ok.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by kobafett

I have the same issues you had (brightness and colour change/over saturation) a lot with HDR. I think this is where people go wrong in their HDR processing because it's really easy to push those to the extremes, especially if you are trying to get your final image in the HDR software.

Sebc I really hope you don't mind. I did this up quickly as an example that I probably wouldn't have used HDR on this because merging the exposures in photoshop will require less work. I know you did this as an example of HDR but I thought it might be beneficial to show others another way.



Sebc, I have already deleted the files from my computer and will delete this if you are not ok.

Too bad... I would have appreciated it without the Photoshop palette in the corner. Don't mind at all... I've got flickr set on copyright only because I haven't figured out what Creative Commons licensing means (simply haven't looked into it yet). Will not be enforcing my copyright on this, unless you start selling it or something.

That's actually one of the things I was thinking about while I was doing this: why wouldn't you just take the best parts of each one to make a composite, instead of taking the the average of all of them? Isn't that what HDR is supposed to do? Maybe if you have less distinct regions or bright and dark?

Will note too that I didn't touch the saturation/colour settings. I guess I need to learn about levels and curves in Photoshop before I can really try getting into HDR.

[SebC]

... detail enhancer, close to default settings.

[SebC]

Exposure blending - highlights and shadows custom:

[kobafett]

^^^ I like this last one better.

I redid for you without the photoshop palette on it. I also have the photoshop document if you would like it to play around with it. PM me if you interested.

[badradio]

Jayems I quite like yours, are you using 3 bracketed exposures, Photomatix then Topaz Adjust?