HDR Brackets Question

[bluehabit]

I was watching a video where someone was shooting HDR photography for real estate and they did a few things that I didn't quite understand based on a few specific scenarios. All shots were setup with a 2 stop spread (+2, 0, -2).

Scenario 1: There was a room with some very dark furniture. In order to capture the detail within the shadows of the dark furniture the user dropped his brackets down a full stop. With HDR the brighter exposure will be the one revealing the detail in the shadow areas, so wouldn't you move the overall brackets up making the scene brighter to see the shadow areas?

Scenario 2: Similarly the user was outside of a house in broad daylight. The exterior door was dark, and he moved his brackets up. So much so that the brightest exposure looked fairly washed out.

It seems like the overall rule he was following was bright and sunny bump the brackets up, very dark objects (furniture) move the brackets down. But this just seems counter intuitive to me for reasons that I already stated. Is the user right in his practices, if so why?

Many thanks for the clarification.

 

[Lucryster]

He did it backwards, but you really shouldnt have to worry about moving your brackets up or down stops. A simple 3 shot 2 stop bracket should be all your need.

 

[fjrabon]

sounds backwards, but I'd have to see what they were doing to say for sure.

How I approach HDR is:

0) make sure there's no way I can fit the entire dynamic range in the shot already in a single frame. 99% of HDR never needed to be HDR.
1) adjust my camera looking at the histo until the brightest parts are right on the edge of the right side, make a note of that setting. Essentially the darkest exposure should be ETTR
2) same as 1 except now adjusting so that the darkest parts are just inside the left of the histo. The brightest exposure should be ETTL
3) calculate what that spread is stop number wise and divide by 3 (or 5 if you are doing a 5 exposure bracket)
4) set your brackets at the number you got from step 3
5) Stabilize the camera, handheld HDR is stupid.
6) After you do the HDR in a HDR program, remember to edit the photo in a normal editing program as well, the HDR image is rarely, in itself, a finished product. I think of it as merely a tool to fit the scene's dynamic range into an image, it's not itself an image creator

 

[bluehabit]

sounds backwards, but I'd have to see what
1) adjust my camera looking at the histo until the brightest parts are right on the edge of the right side, make a note of that setting. Essentially the darkest exposure should be ETTR

For clarification, does that mean you are going as far left / right as you can without clipping?

 

[fjrabon]

sounds backwards, but I'd have to see what
1) adjust my camera looking at the histo until the brightest parts are right on the edge of the right side, make a note of that setting. Essentially the darkest exposure should be ETTR

For clarification, does that mean you are going as far left / right as you can without clipping?

Yes, though I think that's phrasing it backwards. Remember HDR isn't necessary unless your best exposure is already clipped on both sides. If you're only clipped on one side, see if you can adjust the exposure to get all the dynamic range in for one shot.

Essentially on a simple 3 exposure HDR I'll have one exposure that's clipped on the right side, and just inside the left side. one exposure that's clipped on both sides (hence needing HDR in the first place) and one exposure that's blocked out on the left but just barely under clipping on the right.