HDR - how?

NorthstaNder · 13 Jan 2007 at 10:27

Hello,

I'm very much a noob to photography, and really only have a passing interest in it at the moment but it's something I will really get into one day.

One thing though, I've seen some really stunning shots of late which are apparently HDR shots.

Would someone be able to tell me what it means, how to do it and whether I'd need any special equipment/programs. I've got a digital camera but it's only a little compact camera and saves shots in JPG only.

Thanks in advance.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 13 Jan 2007 at 10:30

ugh I might aswel reply as this thread is only gonna go one way anyway.

http://petemc.net/hdr-guide/

Wile E. Coyote · 13 Jan 2007 at 10:33

First you need a camera that can shoot in raw, has bracketing or the ability to under and over expose the shot. A tripod isn't essential but can help, then you need photomatix software to do the HDR effect. Use cYkey's guide here http://petemc.net/hdr-guide/ and this will explain it better

Edit: beaten to it

robertgilbert86 · 13 Jan 2007 at 12:24

RAW isn't totally a must, you can just +/- exposure of one image in photoshop if you want, the results aren't as good but it still works.

cmt · 13 Jan 2007 at 12:36

robertgilbert86 said:
RAW isn't totally a must, you can just +/- exposure of one image in photoshop if you want, the results aren't as good but it still works.

these were shot as 3 seperate jpegs and combined in Photomatix using petes guide

No Raw for me

LINKY

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 13 Jan 2007 at 12:48

You don't need RAW at all. Thats the cheaper way out if you only use a single file. If your camera has any manual control over the shutterspeed then you will be fine. The advantages of RAW is that almost any shot can be transformed into HDR where as if you were going out to delibratly shoot HDR then you would take 3, 6 or 9 files to make a generated HDR file from.