Princeton Battlefield

[Ben Ruset]

Yesterday I went to the Thomas Clark house and Princeton Battlefield to try out some HDR photography. HDR is short for high dynamic range - basically you take three (or more) images of the same scene, one underexposed, one overexposed, and one just right and use some special software to merge the images together so that you get an image that has a high dynamic range. It's a pretty popular technique right now, and can lead to some incredibly stunning (albeit maybe fake looking) images. This was my first attempt:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benruset/sets/72157627171665085/


Untitled by benruset, on Flickr


Untitled by benruset, on Flickr


Untitled by benruset, on Flickr


Untitled by benruset, on Flickr


Untitled by benruset, on Flickr


Untitled by benruset, on Flickr


Untitled by benruset, on Flickr

 

[46er]

Great pix Ben. PBS broadcast the 1779 story of Jockey Hollow last night. I have always wanted to go up there during a snow storm to photograph it, but the roads have always been too bad. Pretty lame, eh?

http://www.njn.net/television/specials/morristown/

 

[manumuskin]

some of them actually look like paintings instead of photographs but they are beautiful.Gets rid of the annoying contrast bright sunlight brings with it.Lets you see into the shadows as well as the sunlight.
Al

 

[dogg57]

Nice camera you are using Ben. Nice job on the photos.

 

[JerseyGenesis]

Great photos !!

 

[manumuskin]

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=563543

would any of these be the software your using to do this? I read the PDF file on the second one down and there were so many terms I didn't understand that I didn't download it.I like the way this technique exposes everything.No impenatrable shadows and no washed out sunspots either.

 

[Ben Ruset]

I used Photomatix. I also tried Qtpfsgui (now called Luminance, but it was way too cumbersome.)

 

[manumuskin]

Thanks Ben.I'll Google that.Now if I could figure out how to make HDR Pano's .I would ass ume I'd have to take three shots of each exposrue.I now take 46 shots to do a pano.Thats almost 150 shots.I'd have to make an HDR photo of each shot first and then feed those 42 HDR shots into the pano stitcher and if it worked you'd have a 360 HDR Pano! Lot of batteries and the computer would have to have some hellified RAM to handle it
Al

 

[Ben Ruset]

Make each exposure level it's own pano and then have the software chew on the three panos.

But yes, that sounds like a royal pain.

 

[manumuskin]

Ben
I don't have a D-SLR and my canon powershot does not support RAW images as far as i can tell.I;ll have to goad Whipoorbill into using his wifes D-SLR to try some HDR.I have an awesome bog he has not been to yet and perhapsd he could high def the bog.
is RAW image capability necessary to do HDR?

 

[Ben Ruset]

I don't think so. What you really need is a tripod and a camera that will do exposure bracketing. (IE: Take one picture underexposed, regular, and overexposed.) The camera can't really move between the three shots, hence the need for a tripod.

 

[manumuskin]

I have manual settings and no how to work them and can mount the camera on a tripod so perhaps this will work.
I guess i would set my white balance for the surrent conditions and then work the aperure back and forth to create over and under exposure meanwhile not letting the camera move and then bring em home and feed into this software and see what magic it spits back out.
If I'm not mistaken i think a RAW image is a shot taken with every conceivable exposure all bundled into one shot.If this is so three shots would be unecessary so doing it the way you say makes sense because to take it in RAW should only need one shot.I'll have to read up on this before i spring for the software.make sure my camera can even do this.
Al

 

[Ben Ruset]

RAW doesn't have all of the exposure levels. There's no way to change the aperture or shutter speed once an image has been snapped.

Changing the aperture between shots will mess up your depth of field, so you'll likely have some blurriness. You would want to keep the aperture the same and change the shutter speed.

 

[Ben Ruset]

Here's someone who's doing it with a point and shoot. If yours supports exposure bracketing then I'd suggest you just use that feature. It will save you a lot of hassle.

http://www.veryinteractivepeople.com/?p=231

 

[manumuskin]

Thanks Ben.I will now find out if my camera does auto bracketing.never heard that term till now.Seems I could do it manually no problem but auto would be faster and allow less time for lighting to change on me.