Digital Cameras are no doubt brilliant devices. Their tiny CCD or CMOS chips can capture an enormous amount of detail. However, their dynamic range- the range of brightness values they can capture in one picture, is limited, a lot more than the human eye.
You may have noticed a lot of pictures with "washed out"(completely white, lacking any detail) skies or too dark subjects. In some cases, this problem can be fixed by using a flash to balance the lighting. However, you cannot expect to light up a huge building using a flash, to balance it against the bright sky!
HDR or High Dynamic Range technique to the rescue! This technique involves taking the same picture at multiple exposure settings and then merging and tone-mapping them using a computer. Usually 3 photographs are taken, exposures separated by 1 to 2 stops. Most cameras have an "Auto-Bracketing" setting, which takes these 3 pictures automatically when you hold the shutter release down.
There are 2 problems with this technique:
1) you need a tripod or a steady surface to keep the camera from moving between the 3 shots.
2) you cannot have a moving object in the frame, or you will get multiple "ghosts" of the object.
Since I don't like using a tripod and searching for a steady surface can limit compositions, I prefer using another technique called pseudo HDR when needed. This technique doesn't extract as much dynamic range as normal HDR, but it is much simpler and can be used for handheld shots or moving objects.
So basically you shoot in RAW format-> this stores a lot more detail than jpeg(by detail here I mean variation of tones, not more pixels!). You have to underexpose the snap by 1 to 2 stops to preserve some detail in the sky while retaining detail in the shadows.
After this, we have to post process to extract all the detail we can from the shadows and highlights:
Open it in Adobe Camera RAW/ Photoshop/ Lightroom/ Aperture
Change the following settings roughly to these values. Tweak to your taste.
Contrast between 90 to 110
Brightness between 70 to 90
Blacks between 5 to 7
Recovery to 100%
now raise the brightness to about 100-120
use the adjustment tools:
Burn(darken) the sky and dodge(brighten) the rest
use a soft large brush and ~exposure -1.8 for burning and +1.0 for dodging
Use noise reduction, sharpening and a slight vignette for a finishing touch.
What I got was this:
You may have noticed a lot of pictures with "washed out"(completely white, lacking any detail) skies or too dark subjects. In some cases, this problem can be fixed by using a flash to balance the lighting. However, you cannot expect to light up a huge building using a flash, to balance it against the bright sky!
HDR or High Dynamic Range technique to the rescue! This technique involves taking the same picture at multiple exposure settings and then merging and tone-mapping them using a computer. Usually 3 photographs are taken, exposures separated by 1 to 2 stops. Most cameras have an "Auto-Bracketing" setting, which takes these 3 pictures automatically when you hold the shutter release down.
There are 2 problems with this technique:
1) you need a tripod or a steady surface to keep the camera from moving between the 3 shots.
2) you cannot have a moving object in the frame, or you will get multiple "ghosts" of the object.
Since I don't like using a tripod and searching for a steady surface can limit compositions, I prefer using another technique called pseudo HDR when needed. This technique doesn't extract as much dynamic range as normal HDR, but it is much simpler and can be used for handheld shots or moving objects.
So basically you shoot in RAW format-> this stores a lot more detail than jpeg(by detail here I mean variation of tones, not more pixels!). You have to underexpose the snap by 1 to 2 stops to preserve some detail in the sky while retaining detail in the shadows.
After this, we have to post process to extract all the detail we can from the shadows and highlights:
Open it in Adobe Camera RAW/ Photoshop/ Lightroom/ Aperture
Change the following settings roughly to these values. Tweak to your taste.
Contrast between 90 to 110
Brightness between 70 to 90
Blacks between 5 to 7
Recovery to 100%
now raise the brightness to about 100-120
use the adjustment tools:
Burn(darken) the sky and dodge(brighten) the rest
use a soft large brush and ~exposure -1.8 for burning and +1.0 for dodging
Use noise reduction, sharpening and a slight vignette for a finishing touch.
What I got was this:
Really cool blog dude..nice work :)
ReplyDeletety :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome post! Ardent follower now!
ReplyDeletethanks!
ReplyDelete