Help: HDR with Canon 350D

[rbcy1974]

Hello,
I have been seeing, hearing about HDR for a bit now, and since I am going to spain I next week, I would like to get some advise as how to set up my camera to do it. I am particularly interested in capturing an old city streetscape, where usually there is a part thats under shadows and one tha tis well lit.
Could anyone tell me how to set up the camera so that I can take several photos in one shot at different exposures good enough for HDR?

Thanks for your help

Regards

Daniel

[jinju]

Heres what I know about HDR. You need a tripod;) Can anyone confirm that?:)

[bpelvan]

Check this link for a complete instruction...
http://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#dr

[green]

Sorry Rafal but no, you don't always need a tripod. In not too extreme case, shooting one shot in RAW format is enough. You'll be able to use IL amplitude a RAW file can offer (-+2 to -+3 IL) to create differents files of the one shot at different exposure correction that you'll then assemble using HDR technique.

[jrj]

Look in your manual for:

Auto exposure bracketing: -/+2 EV in 1/2 EV or 1/3 EV increments

Using the bracketing series with -/+EV2 is a good start.

Tripod is OK but not necessary (daylight shots) as you have an align function i.e. Photomatix which is a fine software for HDR photos.

Good luck

[AthaPan]

IMO you NEED a tripod, even by day.
The best results I have realised not with the exposure brackating method, but more or less with the exposure time by itself. (like 1/10, 1/500 and 1 second at fix f-value).

Means, manual modus, start first one with underexposing,the second a "normal" shot and the third one overexposing.... due to this kind of method you need a tripod...

Otherwise it works as written without a tripod.
It is up to you.

I prefer the tripod!
Hope this is helpful.

Cheers
Saki

[Keitht]

HDR in Photoshop CS2 will not work with variants of the same RAW exposure. It returns a message along the lines of "Not enough dynamic range". That method may work with other software, I don't know.
It is just about possible to create the images without using a tripod if you set the camera to bracket exposure and use burst mode.
You will definitely get much more accurate registration between frames by using a tripod.

[AdrianW]

Set the camera to bracket three shots in RAW. I tend to shoot -0.5 -2.5 and +1.5 from metered. Set the camera shooting mode to Continuous. Lock the AF. Shoot in aperture priority (Av) to prevent DOF change.

You can handhold, but then you'll need to align the images afterwards - for that you'll need to use something that supports identical stitching. I use PTgui on 16bit TIFF conversions of my RAW files, as there are no panorama stitchers that I'm aware of that can stitch natively in RAW.

I do my HDR merge and tone mapping using Photomatix.

Here's an example of the finished result - although this one was tripod mounted due to low light:
Bright lights, big... town

[ronners]

It's probably worth noting that HDR isn't a 'magic fix' for incorrectly exposed photographs. In a number of tests that I've performed using my own bracketed shots of various subjects, it sometimes brings improvement that I couldn't get otherwise, but I'd say in 80% of instances it didn't do too much for me. In may cases images ended up looking quite washed out, and I'd than have to go back and fix that in PS. I also noticed in some cases that a considerable amount of noise was introduced. Photomatix allows you some control but not much over the 'process' but not much.

In fact, I've seen many images that just looked plan weird after HDR processing. If for example you are looking at a night scene you don't really expect to see detail in all the shadows anyway. I'd recommend downloading the trial version and trying out some bracketed exposures of your own (preferably some that you've already worked using non-HDR techniques). You may or may not find that this is a useful tool for you.

Ron.

[jinju]

I think HDR has a very strong rendency to be abused and the results are hideous very often. The best HDR is where yo cant tell anything was done to the image, where the process halps the photo but isnt so obvious it takes away from it.