Bracket/HDR with an autofocus?

[chris_brandt]

<p>Does anyone know of a fixed lens digital camera that is capable of shooting HDR exposure photos? My really old Digital Rebel can do it, but it is a pain to tote it along everywhere I go.<br>

I would like to find a camera that gets five exposures, but beggars cannot be choosers.<br>

Also- do the image formats need to be RAW only, or does Photoshop CS3 use jpegs as well?<br>

Thanks!<br>

If this is a replay that I did not see, sorry...<br>

Chris</p>

[john_h.1]

<p>You can always get five exposures even if you have to take two or more separately. If the camera and scene do not move then the auto-focus will focus the same each time. Yes, jpegs can be used Photoshop CS3. Something would be seriously wrong if the world's premiere image editor couldn't work with the world's most common image format</p>

[m_tt_donuts]

<p>Photoshop's HDR ability is pretty poor with JPG's you're better off with a program like Dynamic Photo or Photomatix. Shoot RAW, however and Photoshop (and Dynamic photo) can pull a lot of detail out of a single raw file. Both seem to add noise (that's to say bracketed shots merged or a single raw file you pull detail).</p>

<p>For a point & shoot the Canon powershot S90 can do both. You don't often need more than 3 bracketed jpg images, as long as you get -2, 0, and +2. The Canon S90 can do that (be warned each takes 0.9s), and it can also shoot RAW which is rare for a P&S.</p>

[accystan]

<p>I think the Canon G11 would be worth looking at. It takes RAW pics if you want to go that route. If you want auto-bracketing it will only take 3 shots but the easily accessable dial on the top of the camera allows you to take +2, +1, 0, -1, -2. It would be 5 separate shots however.<br>

Cheers,<br>

Dave D</p>

[lachaine]

<p>Auto bracketing is just a convenience. Why can't you just do the bracketing exposures yourself, since proper HDR really takes a certain amount of deliberate care anyway. These days, pocket cameras that can do this and RAW tend to be expensive. If that's a problem, you could consider a lesser Canon compact on which you can get both bracketing and raw files using CHDK.</p>

<p>No, you don't absolutely need raw files to do HDR images. Once you've opened a JPEG in Photoshop or whatever, the program doesn't really care what the file format was that it reconstituted the image from. It's fine to use JPEGs if you start out with the largest, finest ones your camera produces, and then you avoid resaving them multiple times (copying them is fine).</p>

[major]

<p >Shooting in RAW is terrific and if you want the greatest control in the digital dark room RAW is the way to go but... using JPEG files will work just fine. The real trick to good HDR is to make sure that your aperture is constant in each photo. When shooting in auto make sure to do so in an aperture priority mode.</p>