So I guess that means that every photo shot in RAW is already HDR?
Well, I think maybe we could say that it has the information and potential to be used to produce an HDR image.
I mean, if we just bracket by one stop each, and then use those three files as is to output TIFs or JPGs for the HDR editor, do we get any more information than using the three stops we have built into the middle neutral RAW file? I don't know, but I'm not seeing it.
Let's put it this way - suppose the three shots were JPGs straight out of the camera, where we couldn't really adjust exposure the way we can with RAW. So, we're stuck with what we got in those JPGs. But we could still make an HDR from them.
But we CAN adjust the RAW file to get those 3 JPGs as output files, and aren't we then in the exact same place?
And really, the end result is all that really matters, isn't it? What we end up being able to actually see in the end version? If the resultant image reveals more dynamic range in the image to our eyeballs than any of the individual 'straight up' photos, haven't we achieved the whole point of the exercise?
Think about this...
On the one hand, we could take three separate photos and bring them together and still work the HDR settings so that it doesn't 'look' like an HDR at all - or we can go totally overboard.
On the other hand, we could take three images from a single RAW, bring them together in and HDR editor and do the same thing.
So, what's the real difference if we get to the same place?
From HDR soft. (
Photomatix Help - Working with RAW files)
Photomatix also allows you to process a single RAW file into an image stored with a 32-bit HDR image format. Please note though that an image created with a single RAW file can not really be considered High Dynamic Range. It is a rather a pseudo-HDR image. The important characteristics of this pseudo-HDR image is that it is unprocessed. Its dynamic range however is not much different from the range of an already converted file. If you want to produce a "real" HDR image, you will need to combine differently exposed shots.
Yeah, I just don't know that I'm buying into that notion. We can't even see RAW files. We can't post them, we can't look at them, they don't exist to us, except as digital information. We can only see an interpretation of them, which is the tone mapped image.
So now we're back to the idea that what we have as an end result is really all that matters - to our actual eyeballs - no matter how we got there.
If we use multiple files that individually deliver detail in shadows, highlights and mid-tones that none of them can do all by itself, from any source be it 3 shutter actuations or 3 RAW exposure conversions, and then we pull them together and tone map them to deliver a single image that displays all of them, I can't see the difference.
Saying one is HDR and the other isn't seems like little more than semantics to me.
Your mileage may vary, of course...