Vindauga

Ever since Wah explained it to me I have been trying to figure out this HDR stuff.

I tried a few before this most recent batch but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with them. Mostly, this is a learning experience. Still, I thought I might post these so that Wah can tell me what I am doing wrong. I am on “vacation” helping a friend move, which brought me to Frostburg Maryland (2 1/2 hours from DC, 2 1/2 hours from Pittsburgh, 2000 feet in elevation). I am managing to squeeze in a bit a sight-seeing and photography. Wandering around downtown Frostburg the first night I decided to try to create a black and white HDR. I had a long internal debate about this on the drive up here. Should I 1) take the photos in black and white and then merge it to HDR or 2) take the photos in color, desaturate it, and then merge it to HDR? I opted for taking them in black and white in order to avoid possible alterations due to the process of desaturation. Below will be first a single image that was merged and then the final results.

The big question is what do I gain in the process of creating an HDR? Taking the photos necessary isn’t terribly time consuming. There is considerably more hard drive space taken up but disk space is cheap. So, it doesn’t seem like a big deal but, if it doesn’t gain me anything, should I continue? In this pair, the single image has not been altered, that is how it came off of my camera, the image is a little flat but playing with the levels and the contrast could help this out a lot. The HDR looks nice, I’m just not sure if it looks nice enough. But, I took two more sets of images before I went home to see how they turned out; before I go too heavily into this, I should put those up as well.

Again, the top picture is a single image used in the merge and the bottom picture is the final result (after my tinkering, which, by the way, needs work; I am woefully uncertain about the whole “curves” thing). I think it turned out fairly well even with, or especially because of, the crazy shadow falling across the yard. And, the last one I did the first night in town…

At this point, I wasn’t terribly impressed. The pictures were nice and they had some real popping colors but its didn’t seem like a grand thing. True, in #3 the porch light came out in a nifty manner. And, in #2 the vibrancy of the colors was cool. Fine, the bricks in #1 had nice tone. But, it really seemed like I could get something similar just by tweaking out the levels and the contrast (maybe even the hue), which is what I do anyway, so, why bother with this processor hog?

The thing is, none of these had a real high number of images to work with. #1 had four total images and one of those was essentially a moot image. The aperture was set to 2.8 and the shutter speeds were 1/40, 1/5, 1.6, 13. For number #2 there were five frames with shutter speeds of .4, 1, 2.5, 6, 15 (all with an aperture of 2.8). While for #3 there were four frames with shutter speeds of 1/4, 1, 4, and 15. Looking back, I’m am not sure how much attention I was paying to all of this. I know that my camera puts several limitations on me: its a Canon Powershot A610, which has numerous manual features but it still counts as a point and shoot. 15 seconds is the upper limit for my shutter to stay open and f8 is the upper limit for my aperture.

In short, I wasn’t enthralled. However, I remember Wah telling me about how Adams would be doing this and how this is basically a way to extend the zone system beyond what film is capable of. So, I started thinking that my biggest problem with these photos was not HDR but rather with my choice of subject. Or really, with the timing for my subject. If I understand this correctly, it will allow me to compress the range of exposure into something that a print (or a screen) can handle. I needed to try again when the light would allow my camera the flexibility it needed to produce the greatest range of exposures.

The next day we happened to be going to a state park. I tried five more times. These single frames have been edited in order to see if I can achieve a similar result.

Again, I didn’t get to see the results until the end of the day. I wanted to try another black and white, this one with a wider range of exposures. I know that plants and water are bad subjects for HDR because they move between shots but this is where I was. But it does make me wonder what it would take to be able to shoot an single image in HDR. This one had seven frames with a high shutter speed of 1/250, and a low of 1 all at f8.

Again, I knew water wouldn’t be the best subject but I thought it might work out, like a long exposure shot. This one had five frames ranging from 1/500 to 1/5 at f8.

Here, I tried to find a more static subject. It had 6 frames ranging from 1/60 to .6 at f2.8

Seven frames, 1/1600 to 1/6 at f8. And the last one I took this day

Again, I was not impressed. One thing that became obvious after this day was that the merged images had a strange water color like character. I didn’t feel like I was getting anything exceptional from this work. I gave up on them for a couple of days but still, I wanted to keep trying. I took these today.

I think I finally have some serious results. I get detail both in the wall of the tunnel and outside. This starts to look like something but, I might ought redo this one because something I learned while processing the next one could affect what I think about all of them.

When I was adjusting this image I finally started messing around with some of the other tabs and such. When converting to a 16bit image, I was adjusting the curves myself on all the other ones but I had neglected to alter the, for lack of a better term, brush size. I was essentially blurring all my other images. This HDR image maintains all of the crispness of the originals while still compressing the zones. Granted, my cameras limitations stopped me from doing more but this is a promising start.

blah blah blah, no one will ever read this all the way through. I haven’t even read it all and I wrote it.