My Inspiration. Trey Ratcliffe Stuck in Customs Klaus Herrman Farbspiel Photography

HDR By Ken Fisher

My Inspiration Trey Ratcliffe Stuck in Customs Klaus Herrman Farbspiel Photography

Trey Ratcliffe

Klaus Herrmann

My Inspiration Klaus Herrmann

Klaus Herrmann My Inspiration

Content 1. HDR What is it? 2. HDR Tips 3. Creating images for HDR 4. Extreme Dynamic Range 5. Vertoramas 6. My Workflow 7. HDR Images

What is HDR? High Dynamic Range

What is HDR? Capturing scenes whose dynamic range is too high for the camera sensor.

What is HDR? 100,000 to 1

What is HDR?

EV 500 Metering

Metering EV 500 EV 500 EV 500 EV 500 EV 500 EV 2500/5 =500

Metering EV 1000 EV 500 Spot Metering

Metering EV 1000 EV 1000 EV 1000 EV 500 EV 500 EV 4000/5 = 800

Filters!

HDR is a Solution! -2 0 +2

Creating Shots Automatically!

Difficult Exposures Noise

Difficult Exposures

HDR Tips

1 HDR Tips? Don t rush to your HDR software

2 HDR Tips? If in doubt refer to rule 1

2 HDR Tips? Don t look for HDR scenes

3 HDR Tips? Learn to hand hold your shots

3 HDR Tips? 1. Take a neutral position 2. Relax your body 1. Don t press the camera against your eye 2. Don t squint your other eye 3. Take a deep breath and exhale

3 HDR Tips? 1. Pre Focus 2. Look through the focus point 3. Shoot multiple sets of images

Shoot RAW 4 HDR Tips?

Shoot RAW 4 HDR Tips? 1. Overexposed image 2. JPG 3. RAW 4. Processing 5. Loss of detail in highlights 6. Recovered detail in RAW

5 HDR Tips? Fix Chromatic Aberration

6 HDR Tips? Optimise the dynamic range 1. 3 RAW Images 2. 5 TIFF images 1. 3 Converted RAW 2. 2 Additional exposures

6 HDR Tips? Optimise the dynamic range

7 HDR Tips? Don t go to extremes

Don t go to extremes 7 HDR Tips? 1. Extreme 2. Moderate 3. Fully Post Processed 4. Strength 5. Luminosity 6. Detail Contrast 7. Lighting Effects

Watch your white point 8 HDR Tips? 1. Highlights 2. Shadows 3. Histogram in Photomatix 1. Set both WP and BP to zero in Photomatix and adjust contrast in Photoshop

Clean up your highlights 9 HDR Tips? 1. Smooth Highlights

Be Careful with Presets 10 HDR Tips? Presets are a starting point not a destination

Post Process 11 HDR Tips? 30% Photomatix 70% Photoshop

Noise 12 HDR Tips? 1. Noise from original image 2. Noise from HDR software Reduce noise early before HDR

Noise 13 HDR Tips? Use Filters to Finish Off Topaz Adjust

Creating Images for HDR

Creating Images for HDR Methods 1. Three RAWs (not the way that HDRsoft recommends) 2. Three Tiffs (Correct Chromatic Aberration in Camera RAW) 3. Five TIFFs (Three RAW files converted to tiffs(-2,0,+2) and create two additional files for -4 and +4) 4. Three JPGS 5. Five JPGS 6. PS RAWs( Creating a 32 bit HDR image using Photoshops Merge to HDR feature, saving it in EXR format and feeding it into Photomatix.

Results Creating Images for HDR

Creating Images for HDR And the winner is Based on these tests, I recommend to you to do following: 1.Shoot in RAW format. 2.Merge your HDRs using Photomatix and not in Photoshop to preserve the colors. 3.Convert your RAW files to TIFFs using a high-quality RAW converter to retain control over highlights and chromatic aberration. 4.If you have a scene with important highlight regions and your coverage of the dynamic range is close to the edge, you should develop additional TIFFs with a lower exposure value.

Extreme Dynamic Range HDR created from 11 exposures in steps of 1EV (1). The brightest (2) and the darkest exposure (3) are too far apart for a standard Auto Exposure Bracketing series found in most cameras today

Manual Exposure Method Preparation Put your camera into A mode (aperture priority mode). You will do the actual shoot in M mode, but the A mode allows you to easily measure the right shutter speeds for your scene. Choose the right aperture. This depends on the lighting of the scene and on the depth of field you are trying to accomplish. Choose the lowest possible ISO sensitivity to avoid noise in your photos. Put your camera into single-point focus mode. This lets you manually select the point that your camera should use to focus and to measure the exposure. Set your focus. You can use the autofocus to get your main subject in focus. Switch the AF off once that s done. Otherwise, your camera may decide to change the focus in the middle of the MEB series which would require you to start from scratch. Put your camera into spot metering mode. In this mode, only a small region around the active focus point is used to measure the exposure. The rest of the frame is ignored.

Measure the shutter speed for the longest exposure (darkest area. Memorize the shutter speed indicated by the camera. We will call this value L (for low). Depending on the amount of light available in the scene, L may be several seconds long. In this example L is 1.3s Measure the shutter speed for the shortest exposure (brightest area). Move the focus point to the brightest area of the scene. Memorize the shutter speed indicated by the camera. We will call this value H (for high). In the example, H is 1/200 seconds. Manual Exposure Method

Manual Exposure Method Taking the shots Camera mode: Put your camera into M mode, and make sure your aperture is set correctly (to the value you have chosen for the scene). Shutter speed: Set your shutter speed to L(1.3s) Shoot: Take a shot. Increase: Increase the shutter speed by 1 stop (three clicks of the wheel). Repeat: If your last shot was taken at or above the shutter speed H, take one final shot and you re done.

Manual Exposure Method Set Camera to AV Mode

Manual Exposure Method Set Aperture

Manual Exposure Method Point Camera at brightest Point and Meter 1/200s

Manual Exposure Method Point Camera at darkest Point and Meter 1.3s

Manual Exposure Method Set Camera to M Mode

Manual Exposure Method Set Shutter speed to 1.3s Take a shot

Manual Exposure Method Three clicks Take a shot etc, etc Until You get to 1/200s

Vertoramas

Lincoln Cathedral Vertorama

Break

Post Processing

1.Shoot RAW 2. Create additional exposures if required 3. Convert RAW Files to TIFF 4. Correct Chromatic Aberration in Camera RAW 5. Tonemap TIFF images 6. Post Process using Photoshop