The Guide to HDR Photography
This Guide will cover a couple important aspects of the craft includes some HDR Tutorials HDR Photography is a fairly new trend with Photographers.
The reason for this is the rise of the Digital Camera. Photographers no longer have to burn a 20 dollar bill every time they shoot a roll. So now this allows for photographers to shoot virtually unlimited photos per location. What is HDR Photography? HDR photography is when you take several different exposures and combine them together. This produces an image with a very High Dynamic Range. There are several techniques for doing this. One is called Tonemapping and can be done with software such as Photomatix. There is also ways to composite the separate images together with Photoshop which is also a popular technique. Check out Alik Griffin’s HDR Tutorials How To Guide for a bunch of cool tricks on how to shoot HDR.
Guide to Shooting HDR
This will cover some of the basics. To shoot HDR you'll need to set your camera in Aperture Priority Mode and into Bracketed Mode. Usually people set the stops 2 stops apart from each other. This will allow the camera to shoot 3-5 shots in sequence and automatically at different exposures where only the Shutter Speed changes and not the ISO or Aperture which will effect the noise and focus depth of the image. A good tip is to set your camera on a count down time of 2 seconds and to always use a Tripod. This will make sure that the camera does not move or vibrate between each shot. The reason for this is you want your three images to line up perfectly with each other in the post processing stage.
Guide to Post Processing HDR
Once you've decided to process your HDR images there are a few different softwares to choose from. The most popular is probably Photomatix Pro. A good tip before doing anything to your three bracketed shots is to turn off any sharpness and enable your lens profile corrections. After that it's very important to do your noise reduction on the photos before sending them to Photomatix. Once in Photomatix keep the strength set to low for a more natural looking HDR image, or turn it up for some of that crazy surreal HDR look. Once you've moved around the sliders to get to where you like the last thing really for this Guide to HDR is to do proper sharpening after the composites have been made. There are are several sharpening programs out there but it's probably best to find something that will only edge sharpen like using the Highpass filter.
HDR Tutorials Conclusion
The rest is really up to you. HDR photos are known for having their heavily processed looks. They are more of a digital art like a painting than imagery that is meant to be photoreal. If you’re looking for more HDR tutorials be sure to visit the link mentioned above where you can find a complete guide to hdr photography as well as other general photography tips.
