Your Beginners Basic HOW TO HDR Starters Guide!
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Alrighty then, you must be new to HDR(High Dynamic Range) photography, since you are on our Beginners Basic HOW TO HDR Starters Guide page, or you are just curious what we have to say about HDR photography. Either way, you have come to the right place if you are interested in HDR photography. HDR photography opens up a whole new world of amazing photography, and if you read everything on our HDR Photography website and get active in our Photography blog, you will surely be able to capture and create awesome looking HDR images.
Basics Of HDR(High Dynamic Range) Photography!
HDR is short for High Dynamic Range, or sometimes you might see it as HDRI which is High Dynamic Range Images or Imaging. There is alot of technical and confusing jargon about what exactly High Dynamic Range means, but for this Beginners Basic How To HDR Starters Guide, we will just say it means that you will get detail in all areas of a scene, the shadows, midtones, and highlights.
HDR photography solves a big problem with digital cameras. Digital cameras can't accurately show all details in a high contrast scene like with the bright sun and dark shadows cast from the sun. With digital cameras and a high contrast scene, if you expose for the shadows then the sky will be blown out and overexposed, if you expose for the bright sky, then the shadows will be totally dark with no details. Some examples of a high contrast HDR scene are shown below.
Examples of a high contrast HDR scene
Average exposure (+/-0) image of this high contrast scene. For HDR photography this photo would work good for getting details in the midtones and some shadows. |
The photo on the left is an average exposure of the high contrast scene. Parts of the sky are too bright and washed out, and parts of the midtones and shadow areas are just black with no detail. That is the problem with taking just one photo of this high contrast scene, the image sensor just can't cover the whole dynamic range of this scene. |
Underexposed (-2) image of this high contrast scene. For HDR photography this photo would work good for getting details in the highlights, like the sky. |
The photo on the left is an underexposed example of the high contrast scene. The sky is exposed well, with good cloud detail and colors, but the midtones and shadows are totally black with no detail. This photo by itself wouldn't work unless you were looking for a silouette of the mountains, but in HDR photography, this photo is needed to get detail in the sky, when combined with the other exposures. |
Overexposed (+2) image of this high contrast scene. For HDR photography this photo would work good for getting details in the shadows, like the tree areas. |
The photo on the left is an overexposed example of the high contrast scene. The sky is totally blown out and just white with no details, but the midtones and shadows have good detail. This photo by itself wouldn't really work, unless you like blown out sky areas, but again in HDR photography, this photo is needed to get detail in the midtones and shadow areas, when combined with the other exposures. |
Final HDR image of the high contrast scene with good detail in most areas of the scene. |
The HDR image on the left is the final HDR image created from the previous three bracketed images. About 95% of the scene has good detail, in the colorful sunset sky and in the tree shadows. The color saturation is usually increased also in HDR photography to make the HDR image more vibrant and alive. |
HDR Multiple Exposures Combined To Make One Awesome HDR Image
Here is an animated gif which shows the exciting results of making a HDR image from 3 or more images with different exposure values. The first photo is the normal average +/-0 exposure of the scene to get detail in the mountain. The second photo is -2 Exposure Compensation to get detail in the bright sky. The third photo is +2 Exposure Compensation to get detail in the shadow areas on the bottom of the mountain. And the forth and final photo is the HDR photo of all three photos combined to get detail in all areas of the photo and to increase the color saturation. A more warm tone was also added to the final HDR image to give the photo a more pleasing sunset look.
HDR(High Dynamic Range) photos can make an ordinary scene look awesome, if you have the right conditions, equipment, and knowledge. Not every scene works good for HDR photos, so we will give you some tips on what scenes work good and not so good for HDR photos, and tips on how to take photos to use as HDR photos. Click Here For Awesome HDR Photography Tips!
HDR photos are great and can take your photography to the next level, and allow you to create amazing photos, and get you excited about photography again. Most of the time when you have a great photo opportunity, the scene has too high of contrast from the highlights to the shadows, so taking one photo isn't going to create a very good result. That's where HDR photos come in and turn that great photo opportunity into a great photo. Creating HDR photos can be a rewarding and exciting experience, so I hope you enjoy this HDR page and learn something new to help you create great HDR photos.
You will need to purchase HDR software to create HDR photos, or buy the Pentax K-x digital camera that has a built-in HDR feature. Click on the Pentax link above and to the right for more info on this cool camera. If you would like to buy some HDR software, please read our HDR photography tip #15 on our HDR Photography Tips page, which talks about some good HDR software and gives you links to their websites. If you have any questions or comments on HDR photos, please contact us below, or by clicking here Contact HDR1. Thank you!
Links To More Awesome HDR Photography/Photo Information!
Click Here For Awesome HDR Photography Tips!
Click Here For Answers To Your HDR Photography Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)!
Click Here For Some Photomatix Presets To Help You Create Awesome Looking HDR Images!
Awesome HDR Photography Books, Guides, Handbooks With Great HDR Photo Tips From Amazon!
Checkout our HDR photography YouTube Videos page, showing cool helpful HDR videos like this one below on a Photoshop HDR Tutorial
This is a very cool YouTube video on making a HDR (high dynamic range) image with one photo using Photoshop. This video shows some good tips on bringing out all the details of an image.
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