Any one Here Do Any HDR Images

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Any one Here Do Any HDR Images

No, I don't. I used to do them but I decided that I really don't like the false lighting which seems to pervade the image, even when HDR processing is used very carefully. Horrgakx posted two well-processed images at http://www.MBClub.co.uk/forums/1131709-post40.html but they both underline exactly what it is that I dislike about the HDR process.

Buttermere: The light would not be the same even value (in reality) between the foreground and the background.

Eskdale: Another image where the light values are 'wrong' to my eye. Under the canopy of trees I would expect it to be darker, especially as the distance increases.

Don't get me wrong here... I am not complaining just to be awkward. I am hoping to open the debate a little further than making anodyne comments on well processed images. Both images are very well presented but not especially real. Your own images are also very well presented. If a photograph is an image that purports to be a record of reality, then these images cannot, in my opinion, convey that reality, regardless of how our brains may interpret the scene when we are present at the location.

A digital image tends to portray colours which are far too vivid, more like a film transparency by dint of the fact that it is viewed by transilluminated light rather than the the reflected light of a print. HDR images are 32bit rather than 8 or 16bit images. Monitors don't display that number of bits natively. You can get native hardware enabled 16bit displays but they are fearfully expensive and they are the exception rather than the rule.

Apart from Safari on the Mac and Firefox 3 (with a plugin) I am unaware of any other web browsers that are colour space aware. Reducing true HDR images to the smallest available 8bit colour space bar none (sRGB) is unlikely to show the richness of detail and the smoothness of tonal graduation while being viewed on the web.

Photoshop incorporates its own HDR processing via OpenEXR manipulation (Merge to HDR from the automate menu) and it permits you to open 32bit images in all versions from 7.0 onwards although 7.0 and CS needed a plugin, with CS2 being the first version to include the native functionality. Follow the link to see some OpenEXR related pages.

OpenEXR

My photography is mainly monochromatic these days and I am inspired by the great documentary photographers of people, such as Don McCullin, Dorothea Lange and Eugene W Smith for example. I have included a low resolution copy of one of my images to demonstrate the sort of images which I like to make.

It is a portrait of a helicopter pilot which was printed as a small 16 x 20 inch canvas. Camera was a Canon 5D mark II with a 16 ~ 35 mm f/2.8L zoom lens set to 35mm, handheld exposure at 1/200th of a second at f/9.0 which was taken inside an R44 at about 1500 feet and 120 knots.
 
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I stumbled upon this HDR tonemapped timelapse video the otherday and thought it worth sharing.

Best viewed in full screen.

We start off with normal timelapse and then go into the 3 and 7 bracket tone mapped HDR timelapses.

I wanted to create a sense of colour and insanity that Las Vegas gives you. All from one view point. My balcony.

24 Hours of Neon on Vimeo
 

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