High Dynamic Range Images

This my first attempt at High Dynamic Range images. A lot of folks are playing with them now.
These are basically multiple images of the same scene that have been merged to yield one image that has great detail in the shadows, midtones and highlights. Something that is near impossible to do in the camera. One article I read said it was "Seeing more like the human eye" which is a pretty good description.

The peach above is an example of extremes between the highlights and shadows. It was done very early in the morning, the peach in the deep shade while the rising sun was lighting the background. With a lot of photoshopping to burn and dodge, I could have had a decent image, but would have lost a bit of detail somewhere, and would have created a good deal of noise in the shadows. I would not use this technique for news photos, an ethical no-no, merging images, but fun for my personal work.



The top image is the merged HDR image. The second photo was my middle exposure when I captured the images. I set my camera to bracket by 1.3 stops, and shot three frames. One over exposed, one right on, and one under. You really need to set up on a sturdy tripod so you don't have any camera movement. Your subject needs to be perfectly still as well.

You can use a program like Photomatrix to merge your images, or if you have Photoshop CS it has an HDR tool. Supposedly, from my research, Photoshop gives better results.
Google High Dynamic Range images and you will find a bunch of free tutorials. Give it a try.
Just don't be in a hurry, because the process takes a while, even on a fast computer.

This is a cool toy. I will be posting more images I am sure. Give it a try.