Many of you probably have seen HDR (high dynamic range) images in the past. Oversaturated images with strong shadows and highlights that look very surreal. To do such a thing, simply go into Photomatix Pro and play with the adjustments. Doing so is not the purpose of this article though. We will be talking about creating realistic images with a high dynamic range in order to maintain detail in highlights and shadows and to properly adjust the exposure. To do this, you need a digital camera, a Tripod
While sitting over Thanksgiving dinner, a friend and I were talking about the dynamic range of digital cameras and how to improve images. As luck wanted it, we had a very dark red wine, very bright highlights on the glasses, a light colored bread and some other items. After we were done with the Turkey and the rest of the food, we started working on the setup. This friend of mine is a videographer, so we had a 1000 Watt video light, a 500 Watt video light, and my camera, a Nikon D200
We started with the basic setup, the bottle in the background, the bread in the foreground and several knives in and on the bread and to everyones amusement a wine opener in and on the bread. After playing around a little, we decided to get rid of any utensils around the bread except for the raspberries just to catch up a bit on the color of the wine. The label light was set up at a 30 degree angle from the label and shone through a piece of non-reflective Cinefoil
Once we had the camera and the subject set up, the fun could begin. Part of the fun was to hold a handmade lens-hood over the lens and hold it steady within the three millimeters range where it did not appear in the picture and where we had no glare in the lens from the overhead light.
The first thing you want to do when shooting HDR like we did, you want to get a good exposure. Since we used videolights, we just went with whatever exposure the camera told us. From there, we went four stops down and four stops up and covered each stop in between, getting a total of nine images, which yielded the following range:
As you can see, we covered a range where the picture is almost black and almost white. The image in the center is the one the camera recommended and far from the result we actually want to get. Of course, on manual exposure with a bit of tweaking, we would have gotten a picture, but why bother if we are going HDR anyways?
When taking a series of nine pictures like that to use for HDR, make sure that your tripod is sturdy and your camera does not move.
After downloading the pictures to your computer, open your version of Photoshop and go to the File Menu and choose “Automate” and “Merge to HDR”. There you can choose your files and do not forget to click on “Attempt to Automatically Align Source Images” at the bottom before clicking ok. Your computer will now calculate for a while and present you with a new window with a white point slider where you should try to get the image as close to the final as you possibly can. After clicking ok, the file will open in Photoshop. Once it does, save it as an .exr file to get the best quality possible.
Once you have done so, start Photomatix and import the file. When you go with your cursor over the image, you will see the dynamic range you have available now. Much better than your regular RAW, isn’t it? In Photomatix, click on “Tone Mapping” and stay within the Details Enhancer if you want a realistic looking image. If you have never worked with Photomatix before, just play around a little with the sliders and you will understand fairly quickly what each slider does.
I admit I spend a few minutes in Photoshop to fix a few little glitches, but just take a look at the difference:
