We’ve all seen those cool rusty old cars done in HDR style, well I’ve found one on the side of Highway 9 on the way to Zion National Park in Utah. I couldn’t help but snap more than a few auto bracketed sets from various angles.

By pongky

Today we feature a lake photographed and processed in HDR. Check out the wonderful sky and detail in the bushes in the foreground that would have mostly been hidden away using a traditional single exposure due to the high contrast between the sky and the ground.

By Kris Kros

Today we see the power of what HDR processing can do, you can see in the flickr link what the original landscape looks like. After the HDR processing you can see how much more powerful the imagery is, which is what the artist intended.

By traumlichtfabrik seen in the HDR HQ group pool

I am a sucker for brilliant seascapes, especially if it has a lighthouse in it. This image looks so natural that you wouldn’t know it’s HDR unless I told you.

By Automatt

So what if you come back from your shoot, and find that:

* there is too much camera movement to get a clean auto alignment (and you’re too lazy to manually align them)
* there is undesired movement in the frames – such as a moving person or cars
* you thought your camera was in auto-exposure bracketing mode, but instead you only got a series of shots with the same exact exposures
* you deleted one of your exposures in your set accidentally
* the shot is an action shot (eg. a bird, plane, or car racing) that makes it impossible to do a bracketed set

Can you still do HDR if any of these conditions apply? YES! That is possible with just one RAW. We shall call it the HDR1 process, which is short for HDR processing using one (single) exposure. In this article we will be discussing how to achieve HDR results using the HDR1 process and compare it to another image of the same scene with the same exact output settings in post processing so you can easily see the results between the two processes.

HDR1

With the HDR1 process – it is entirely possible to do an HDR out of any single RAW shot you want. Before we are able to merge the images, we have to create the bracketed set first. This is done by exporting the normal exposure (metered) exposure as a 16-bit TIF file. Yes, TIF files are huge, a 12 megapixel image is 71mb in size – but well worth it. Then you need to adjust the exposure to +2 and -2 and export those as TIF as well, so now you have your set as well. You could try going with a broader range ( such as +3, -3 or +4,-4 ) but the results typically won’t be quite natural.

Once you have your digitally-produced bracketed set of 2 or more “exposures”, then we take it into a HDR merging software such as Photomatix. Photomatix will have a different setting and you will sometimes have to manually assign the exposure value (EV) for each of the frame. This is different when you are dragging in a set of RAW files from a folder. Now you have your set of TIF files – you do not have to check the “align images” option, which speeds up the merging time considerably.

Here is a comparison of a shot taken with 3 bracketed shots and a HDR1 image. Can you spot the differences? Click on them both and they will open up in the same window, then you can click back/forward to compare the images.

HDR1 (single exposure)

Click to enlarge

3-exposure HDR

Click to enlarge

Results:
* The darks are darker ( more contrast ) in the 3-exposure HDR image
* More dynamic range (not much, though) in the 3-exposure HDR image
* Colors seem to be more vibrant in the 3-exposure HDR image
* More detail in the clouds in the 3-exposure HDR image

Other Examples

By Artie | Photography

By Abed Dodokh

By Omar Junior