HDR

This is not going to be diving post, but it is going to be about something I'm looking forward to try out while diving. I'm talking about HDR (High Dynamic Range) photo. There are tons of stuff on the net explaining it in great details. Suffice to say that you take 3 or more identical shots, only changing the exposure. Usually one shot will be correctly exposed, one will be under exposed and the last will be over exposed. Advanced cameras has a function called bracketing for this purpose. Turn it on and just hold the release button in and the camera will take three consecutive images with different exposure.
Afterwards you merge the three photos to taking the best of each. Lets just look at one I did.

This first image has been correctly exposed. It's not looking all bad, but it leaves something to desire. THis was a beautiful sunset, which the photo totally fail to recreate. The sky as well as the river are just plain boring, also one could want some more details in the darker areas.

This image has been under exposed, and now the sunset appare! However, the houses and plants on the riverbank are just black siluets. 

And finally the overexposed one. Now the details in on the banks are perfectly clear, but the sky and the river is blown out, and the image might as well been taken at noon.

So lets se what HDR can do for us. Keep in mind that I started looking into HDR about 3 hours ago. This time includes reading a couple of pages in a book about it, finding and buying the software, realizing that the images I took earlier in the day all had flares that ruined them, so I had to run out to catch the sunset and retake the images. Then coming back home, editing the images and writing this blog post. So there might be a lot more I could have done with the images, that I will learn in the future.

Some of you will have seen my other photos, and already know that there is a lot you can do with Light Room 3 and raw files. So lets just have a look at my best effort with "only" Light Room (without spending a lot of time on it.

Personally I like the HDR image way better, I think I'm going to be a great fan of HDR. Looking forward to the cenotes in mexico with the light comming into the cavern zone. With HDR I think I can get a good representation of the light and the dark areas. Can't wait.

Just a short end note, who said that the image you produce has to look anything like real life. I just played around with the HDR software to get a more wacky end product on this one. Ended up looking a lot more like the LR version. With no details in the shadow, but really great colors in the sunset.

More HDR images by me can be found in this album.