P#18 Q1: What is High Dynamic Range Photography?

Understanding High Dynamic Range

Tony Sweet: What exactly is HDR? It stands for High Dynamic Range. It is a process of shooting several images at different exposures to record the wide dynamic range of the scene beyond the camera's capability to capture the same scene in a single photograph. It's that simple.

Audri Lanford: What are the benefits?

Tony Sweet: Using high dynamic range, you're able to capture shadows and highlight details and go beyond a single exposure. You can highlight shadows, or tone them down. You have complete control over the entire dynamic range of the image.

Audri Lanford: How does this work?

Tony Sweet: This is the easy part actually. It sounds crazy but, generally we will shoot a series of exposures averaging from two stops under to two stops over. They all get blended together in a specific software package.

Almost all professionals use software called Photomatix for this.

HDR can be done in Photoshop, but there's no real tone mapping available. In Photomatix there is. We'll talk about all of this as we go along. Tone mapping is what makes HDR pretty incredible.

Audri Lanford: For best results, how many different exposures is it good to take?

Tony Sweet: I take between four and seven but a lot of photographers just take five or three. That's basically it. It's not as many as you might think or it may be more than you think. I've taken no more than seven, which would be three under, three over, and one average or on meter.

Bracketing for HDR

The next question I guess would be brackets for three exposures. Generally, you would shoot two under, two over, and then one on meter. Either of those will work. Of the more stuff you have in the middle, the more detail you're probably going to get throughout your image.

The average is five -- two under, two over, and one right in the meter.

Audri Lanford: Some cameras allow you to do auto bracketing. Do you have your camera do this automatically or do you manually set the exposures?

Tony Sweet: My camera, like almost any camera these days, has auto bracketing capabilities but also lets you bracket manually. It doesn't matter really. Auto bracketing is a bit faster, but not much.

I tend to shoot manually because I find that the five auto bracketing or the seven auto bracketing doesn't always work out for me. The one that's on the positive side, plus three or something like that, will be totally washed out.

To do it manually I'll take a reading and then I'll just base what I do off of that. A lot of times, I'll shoot one over and three under, something like that. It depends on the scene, but in general, it's hard to miss doing auto bracketing on five. That will get you there most of the time, except for the most extreme situations.

In Conclusion

HDR photography is currently a bit more complicated than the average click and shoot techniques many of us are used to. If, however, you want complete control over the dynamic range of your photographs, it may be well worth the effort. Using high dynamic range photography, you can create images that are otherwise beyond the capability of your camera.