HDR

Thanks for your responses to the blog last week.  A few of you expressed some interest in HDR photography.  Like Lisa and Duncan.  It caused me to get a program called Photomatix and spend long evening hours glued to the monitor. 

This is a fascinating development — the High Dynamic Range created by the software compensates for the limitations of dynamic range that has plagued cameras since the American Civil War — certainly more recently for those who used slide film. 

And right now we are watching the maturation of a technology that has already gained huge acceptance among post-processors.  It's exciting to play with this — like surfing close to the front of the wave.  There are a few good news bits on this:

• it's free (get Photomatix on line -- it watermarks your images, but who cares when you're playing)
• it stands alone from other programs.  Photomatix does it all.
• there is a built-in full tutorial in Photomatix
• Trey Ratcliff (a great HDR artist) has a set of free tutorials AND a sense of humour!
• LAST REASON:  it's fun

You should bracket your images (i.e. take a series at different EVs), but even if you don't,  you can get a degree of increased dynamic range with one image.


Check out our flickr site where I've posted a few.  They are first attempts.  Trey Ratcliff has GREAT images.