Photography question HDR?

[dubois]

HDR is pretty cool, how is it done? What software? Expensive?

Eg:

found something here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDR_photography

VERY COOL!

PS: was Norman Rockwell ahead of his time? Is this the way we really see, or the brain has been adjusting to the photography that we are used to? Lots of questions...

[ray_]

I dunno.

But they took your Kodachrome away!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105766617

Cheers,

Ray

[f1reverb]

Your best bet, like usual, is to put your question into a google search and you'll find enough info to keep you busy reading for years. Essentially, HDR is an attempt to capture the dynamic range of light that our eyes see with film/digital. Your eye can give you a blue sky while giving you detail of what's in the shadows in the shade, all at the same time. Film/digital does not see the same way, and if you expose for the sky, shadow detail is lost, and if you expose to get shadow detail, the sky will be way overexposed. The real problem with HDR is that the overwhelming majority of people doing it make the resulting shot unreal, not a representation of the scene as our eyes see it. The photo is not a photo then, but a photo illustration. One way to extend the dynamic range is to bracket your exposures, shooting say five shots instead of one, with two underexposed and two overposed (different exposures even with the over/under exposutes) and then stack the five shots in Photoshop. Of course if anything moves/light changes in the scene between the exposures you have problems. Read, read, read.

And Ray, yep, bye-bye Kodachrome. Only one place in the world has processed it for years, Dwayne's in Kansas, so this was expected. No film has the archival quality of Kodachrome, and my entire color archive is only Kodachrome, as that's what magazines always wanted. My 11 film Nikon bodies are threatening suicide.

Speaking of eyes, I'm recovering from scratching the cornea on my dominant eye. I haven't even been able to drive or read well enough to see the computer until today. The accident happened Monday evening. Even now what I type is blurry, but on the mend.

[dubois]

I quickly tried this HDR thing, for say 4 hours, couldn't even come up close to anything that was worth looking at, just garbage.

The point that I am trying to make is that - and Jay I know you will disagree - it takes a real artist to first capture the moment, and then "illustrate" it in a masterful way. Like a painter, such a Renoir, which captures and then tweeks, not everybody can do it. People must spend hours creating these pictures, yes with the help of technology, just like a paint brush, electronic paint brush - or maybe like Picasso, they are so good that can slap something together in seconds! Nonetheless there is art and talent involved!