Friday... Must Be Vegas

It is not too often when I sit at one location for more than a day or so. I think the last time was in Sept 07 when I spent a wonderful five days on the waterfront in Portland ME. Today is the fifth day that I am still in LAS waiting for a flight assignment. It does give me an opportunity to catch up on some laptop work, get current on the blogosphere, Facebook, and e-mail. I tend not to use my No Blog Day option when I have this kind of time.

Anyhow I just got done watching Matt Kloskowski' post on HDR. If you want to see the post and link to video click here. So I downloaded a copy of HDRsoft' Photomatix software to see how it would work. High Dynamic Range imaging has become a hot topic in photography today and I have been looking forward to jumping into it.

So here I am in my hotel room, I grab my Canon G9 and select it to jpg (I normally shoot RAW) at a 5MP size so I don't have to work with such large files on the laptop as I am starting to max out the hard drive.

NOTE:

This is the first entry into HDR and I did not want to take the final image in this post into Photoshop but rather show an example of what the leading HDR software produces using the default setting. It is obvious further work needs to be done to the image to enhance the tonal range of the final product.

The three images above are what I used to process the HDR image. Notice that each image is two stop up from the previous. This gave me the dynamic range for the  software to retrieve the necessary shadows and highlights. The interface of the Photomatix software is very straight forward. After the importing is complete an adjustment interface panel (shown right) comes up to make the necessary adjustments. Make no mistake, adjustments will be necessary. I just used the default settings and clicked the Process button at the bottom and the image below is what I ended up with.

A couple of points I will make are these:

• Even using the ghost elimination option on the import screen. It is best to use more than three images to start with.
• Do not shoot through a window as any dirt or smudges on the window will be multiplied and picked up as a shadow in the HDR.
• As I said above, you will need to make adjustments to the interface. Experimentation is the operative word.
• A tri-pod is a must. I used my Really Right Stuff G9 Case as the holding device on my window sill.

Just like someone who is new to hue/saturation adjustments, HDR is often over cooked. There seems to be two thoughts on HDR. Provide and "over done" image that is more of artwork and enhance the composite image to provide the viewer with a dynamic range that was available to the photographers eye when the shot was taken.

Sounds like fun to me. Have a great weekend... Doug