Photowalkpro have several movies on how to do to get good using HDR images. Here’s one that shows you how to set up and camera settings for HDR. It is good if you have a camera that has bracketing in other words that can take multiple images with different exposures. The Nikon D40 does not have bracketing, which can be useful to know. You will find several tutorials on photo that you surely will have use of them.
Since I have a Canon EOS 350D so is my description of it, but if you read your manual, I am sure you can succeed even if you have a Nikon or a different brand on your SLR. In order to create good HDR images you need multiple exposures and it is not too hard to set that on your EOS 350D.
Only a small film about HDR and what it is.
1st Set the mode to P
2nd Set so that you take several pictures of straight. Multi-Exposure.
3rd In the Menu, locate the Camera Meny 2
4th The first row is the AEB, which stands for Automatic Exposure Bracketing. It will make the exposures you make will have a different exposure time and thus you get a normal one underexposed and one overexposed. Select and use the right arrow button on the camera to expand the setting. Set it so you have white markers at -2, 0 and +2.
5th Turn the camera on a stable tripod or a solid surface. Browse for your subject and press the exposure button. Hold the button until all three exposures are completed.
Now you have the different exposures that you need to assemble your HDR image in, for example Photomatix , Photoshop CS2/CS3, Luminance HDR or FDR Tools .
[Foto: kimdokhac] HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and the only reason I raise this is that with Photomatix have started to ship a Light version for $39. There is of course a trial version also if you want to play around a little. I do not think there is something for a beginner, but it should probably be quite familiar with this with the various photographic applications work and results do not provide enough for all the hassles that HDR does. That does not mean that I can explain a little about it.
What then is HDR?
High Dynamic Range launched with to Photoshop, with CS2. What it does is that it deals with images that are exposed to various long to assemble in an image which has more information than what the camera can handle. Either it has taken several pictures at the same location with different shutter speeds (tripod is a must) or so takes up several images with different exposures from a RAW file. The information from both dark and bright areas are assembled into an image that has more information in all lighting zones. Most people blend different exposures together, they call it, toneblending.
After a little tampering with Photomatix , I must say that it is both cumbersome and buggy. It was tricky to understand how to select files to be merged. I had to do a separate folder where I put my photos with different exposure. The calculations take a long time and it may have great patience. The program bugged out several times. It was an old version. It may become better now. Just try and see.
Now if you are curious and want to explore more HDR, I think enough to FDRTools is a much better option. FDR Tools Basic is free for both Mac and PC so it costs nothing for you to try. This program takes images and makes the the 16 bit TIF format, so the final product will be substantially large files around 40 MB. Remember that jpg is an 8-bit format and tiff goes with a 16-bit colourspace.
It seems to me that HDR is a little too convoluted for it to be interesting, but if you’re curious, so why not try. Try FDRTools then rather than using an old version of Photomatix. You also have Qtpfsgui that is open source and free to use.
Update: There is a trial version of Photomatix Pro 3.2.7, which you can download at HDRSoft. I like not on trial versions and prefer to use a great free software or open source. Here you will find also a good tutorial on how to create HDR images with Photomatix. Always try things once and then come back to it later because you may understand more. Play around.
Learn more about HDR : Nature Escape’s article on HDR (also in pdf), Luminous Landscape, Wikipedia, Cambridge in color about Dynamic range, Cambridge in color about HDR , Flickr Group of HDR.
Photomatix releases is product as Light version and you can see the difference from the fully fledge version. The budget version might come in as a good alternative for HDR.
Otherwise if you want to do HDR for free FDR tools and Qtpfsgui are the only free alternative and the results is often not so good if you don´t know what you are doing. There is of course a free trial you can use for awhile.
Most people covers the two or more pics in Photoshop and HDR software may be too complex for the common user. You could use Photoshop or Gimp for a cheap price and use layermasks to get a good exposure using two or more pics. People tend to overdo it because that they don’t know better.
Via: Photography Bay
