HDR

[gregf]

<p>Question for those who have plenty of experience with HDR. I use a 5D2, generally, if I am planning to do HDR for a given photo, I set it up, and shoot it normally, but shoot +/-2 at .33EV increments. I do it this way, because it's just easy to start at -2EV and keep increasing the increment by .33EV.</p>

<p>I have not really found it necessary to go beyond +/-2...but I have not really tried. A few times, I have set it on bulb to get anywhere from 45 sec to 2 min. For those of you who do HDR, do you often go beyond 2EV? And how do you go about it?</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Gregory,</p>

<p>It depends entirely on the dynamic range contained within the scene. If you have a 10 stop scene then your +/-2 will work fine. I often go +/-4 stops for interior real estate where I am trying to hold detail outside windows as well as getting light to dark corners in rooms. In those situations, a bright sky and dim interior, the range contained within the scene can be massive, in those situations your workflow would not work.</p>

<p>The real trick is to cover the range so your darkest image has no blown highlights and your lightest image has no dark shadows, that will give your HDR program the necessary "good" pixels to work with.</p>

[lester_wareham]

You say you are shooting in 1/3 EV increments if I read you post correct. I have not found this necessery and

normally just shoot -2, 0, +2, of course for very high contrast scenes you might need to add -3 and +3 et seq.

Can't say I am an expert however.

[peter_mckone]

<p>It's often the +1 and -1 images that have the extra detail you need. It would be nice if cameras would optionally take bracketed shots with 5 images. If you give raw files to your HDR processing program (rather than jpegs) it should be able to extract some additional good pixels. And you can still edit the final result in Photoshop.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Peter,</p>

<p>I can do 3,5 or 7 bracketed shots at up to 3 stops difference between each shot, that gives a theoretical 30 odd stop EV range, that is way too broad for any but the most specialised circumstances.</p>

[peter_mckone]

<p>Scott, I have a 5D2. I re-checked the manual. I don't find any way to get more than 3 bracketed images at a time. Of course I could change the parameters and get 3 more images, but I'm not confident that I could do that without moving the camera, even on a tripod.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Ah Peter,</p>

<p>I am using a 1Ds MkIII, that appears to give you more options. Having said that, just set up the 5D MkII to do the 3 bracket sequence but put EV compensation to -2 stops then re-shoot another sequence at +1 stop. That will give you a 6 image HDR stack at 1 stop intervals from -3 to +2 with minimal resetting of controls. If you truly can't adjust the EV setting between series then you could tether the camera and adjust through Image Capture or whatever the Canon utility for tethered shooting is now.</p>

<p> </p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Gregory,</p>

<p>The first thing that struck me in your post was your use of only a .33 stop difference per image, I was looking up a completely unrelated image issue tonight and came across <a href="http://beforethecoffee.com/bracketing-number-of-images/">this tutorial</a> which you might find interesting. </p>

<p>One of the widest ranged images he lists is my normal issue, interiors with windows at around 14 stops. But his real suggestion, for most situations, is a two stop difference and three shot sequence.</p>

<p>Anyway, hope you find it interesting.</p>

[markonestudios]

<p>Thanks for the link, Scott. Very informative</p>