Is there a downside to HDR?

[Alex_B]

Gawd, I hope not!!!

I am afraid, yes

 

[Bifurcator]

Hehehe... Let's flood them with the facts!

 

[Fox Paw]

Thanks for all the responses. I've learned a lot.

 

[Fox Paw]

I was thinking about your responses.

Here are test shots I took. They have no pretensions of photographic merit. I set the camera and tripod in a place in my house where I thought the dynamic range would tax the camera. The first is the baseline shot for the three bracketed shots that went into the tone-mapped shot, the second is the tone-mapped shot. With each, I lowered the brightness and saturation, boosted the contrast and sharpened. There was no other processing. The processing wasn't equal so this isn't an entirely fair comparison.

The bright lights outdoors are blown out in both shots, but less so with the HDR shot. There's nothing weird about the colors in the HDR shot. My sense is simply that it tamed the dynamic range better and gave me a marginally better photograph (not a keeper) than I would otherwise have had. The lamp and the area that surrounds it, for example, is much better in the HDR shot.

For whatever it's worth.

 

[Joves]

I dont like it simply because, it is over done. There was one guy whos stuff I liked. He would shoot major us cities and, make them look like minatures for a railroad set. Some were good and some were not but, it was a cool affect.

 

[Garbz]

Hehehe... Let's flood them with the facts!

I've been doing this for years. It's pointless. You're reasonably new here so I must say don't underestimate quite how futile facts are on this forum.

The bright lights outdoors are blown out in both shots, but less so with the HDR shot. There's nothing weird about the colors in the HDR shot. My sense is simply that it tamed the dynamic range better and gave me a marginally better photograph (not a keeper) than I would otherwise have had. The lamp and the area that surrounds it, for example, is much better in the HDR shot.

For whatever it's worth.

Yep now jump into photoshop and add some contrast because you have in my opinion totally killed the photo. The effect is no where near subtle enough, and this is a hard picture to make it subtle too, as when you bring out the detail in the windows (which there are non because it's not true HDR) you also darken the light source on the right. This is a tricky one.

They also make laser projectors that are capable of HDR.

The same conundrum I find myself in with my large gamut monitor. What's the point of AdobeRGB if the rest of the world can't see the wonderful colours. I don't need them. I was there. I know what it looked like While on the topic of philosophy the AdobeRGB spec for colour matching a print asks for a white point of 180cd/sqm and a black point of 0.65cd/sqm, a contrast ratio of just 280:1. Even when these monitors become common place I doubt you'll see HDR pickup much in photography. It'll boom in the games industry though

 

[Bifurcator]

LOL @ Garbz... They're a little on the left side of the bell curve here aye? :lmao:

Fox Paw, Try using HDRShop. It was the first ever HDR utility on any platform and is limited to the intended purpose of HRDI assembly. It's free (and there is a commercial version too) from the author's website: http://projects.ict.usc.edu/graphics/HDRShop/ Just click on the Download v1. link at the top-right.

Read around on that site too - very educational! You will need to read the 1st tutorial and also the introduction link is very good.

To use the software basically you load the exposures, select a white-point and/or a black-point either by interactively clicking in the image or numerical entry and then save either a 24 bit copy of the exposure or the HDRI to display at that exposure level.

Err, or something like that. It's been quite a few years since I used it - read tutorial #1. But anyway... that's the original deal right there.

 

[Fox Paw]

Thanks for the suggestion, Bifurcator.

I certainly agree that the HDR shot is low on contrast and would need other work if I intended to keep it, which I don't, and I don't intend to work on it. I think it provides better raw material to work with than the other shot. That's all.

 

[Bifurcator]

I think so too. If you think this though then really do try that HDRShop thingy - as that would be one of it's fortes! And it won't put water marks all over your image either.

 

[Fox Paw]

I'll try it, Bifurcator...though I can solve the watermark problem simply by paying Photomatix for the software.