Let me see: Disney HDR's

[woj68]

Basically, you are taking 3 (or more) pictures with a camera on a tripod. You use something called exposure bracketing which means you'll take a photo at the correct exposure, and 1 or more above and below the correct exposure.

Special software, in this case Photomatix, takes those multiple photos and merges them together and attempts to increase the range of colors/shading/etc in the picture - the 'Dynamic Range' part of it. The effect appears are more of a range of colors/shades/etc.

It's recommended that you use the "AEB" setting on your dSLR for the three exposures. Set the exposure to "-2, 0, +2". That way you'll get three very different shots to use when you merge the three together for your one HDR photo.

Hope this helps.

 

[bostran1]

Here is a picture showing the original three exposures used and what they became in photomatix. Hopefully that gives you a decent idea of the pieces it takes to do HDR

 

[jfulcer]

So I played around with my S2 to figure out Bracketing and took some pictures in my basement. First I took a regular flash photograph:

Then I took a bracketed image and processed with Photomatix. I just pretty much kept the standard settings:

Source photos:

Wow, what a huge difference. Of course, this won't work for images with motion, but still. It's cool.

 

[bostran1]

You might be surprised. If you can shoot continuous and do continuous shots, it will usually turn out pretty well. Of course, that might require a dslr. But it is a great effect to use!

 

[ColleenS]

Thanks Ben & Jeff for showing your example photos. We're leaving in a few days & I will be sure to give HDR a shot

 

[bostran1]

Good luck and have a great trip! I hope you get to share some beautiful shots with us. One tip, HDR does some incredible things with clouds, especially big puffy white ones!