HDR HQ

Top 10 HDR Tips

The Shoot

HDR photography is slightly different from traditional single-exposure photography, and I will try to impart the top 10 things to keep in mind during the shooting phase. In other words, the technical issues / obstacles you might face when capturing auto-bracket shots. In no particular order:

10 – ALWAYS make sure the ISO on your camera is set to as low as possible given the lighting situation. For example, 100 in bright daylight and up to 400 (maximum) if hand-held. If you have a tripod, then this does not affect you – keep the ISO as low as possible. This is because the HDR process exacerbates the amount noise in the RAW images to the point that the merged image becomes useless. I would say anything above ISO 400 would yield a merged image that is too noisy.

9 – Always shoot in RAW. HDR or no HDR, this is the best way to go if you intend to post process your shot, auto-bracketed or single. Remember that raw preserves much more detail per pixel that you can try to extract during post processing yielding higher quality images.

8 – If you don’t have a tripod, it’s ok! You can still do an auto-bracketed shot IF your camera has the feature built in. If you are afraid of moving too much or if your camera’s FPS is too slow, don’t worry – HDR merging software like Photomatix has a good “align” feature. If this doesn’t work, you can still manually align the images in Adobe Photoshop. If all else fails, you can always do a single-exposure HDR (click the link to read more).

7 – Watch out for moving objects – usually moving objects (cars, people, birds) will look pretty bad when in an auto-bracketed set of shots. They will look like ghosts that you will probably need to clone out. I try to avoid this as much as possible – by waiting until the people are out of a shot, or if they seem to be able to stay in a certain position for about 1 second.

6 – Use continuous (high, if possible) burst to reduce the chances of camera shake and object movement – even if you have a tripod. What’s good about continuous burst is that it will usually stop taking exposures once the bracketed shots are done.

5 – If you have access to a tripod, use timer setting – this virtually removes the chances of any shake due to pressing the shutter release. The timer (on higher end cameras) on auto-bracketing mode will fire the sequence of bracketed shots automatically – so there is no need to press the shutter for each exposure. Another positive factor when you do this, is that during merging, you do not have to align the images making it a much faster merging process.

4 – When shooting cars or shiny surfaces, the most impactful HDR shots usually happen with medium to dark colored surfaces, because the reflections will be made that much more clear, as opposed to a yellow or white car – which tend to look dull and flat when processed in HDR. Obviously some exceptions apply – this is a generalistic rule.

3 – Remember, you can HDR anything! Something that doesn’t look like it would look good in single exposure photography – may end up looking like an absolute gem after HDR processing! Think mundane objects such as broken down cars or structures, dull and cloudy days, your messy garage — just be creative.

2 – Remember, not all images will benefit from the HDR process. Anything that is rather flat in dynamic range – meaning not much contrast between the darks and the lights in the scene, would probably not end up looking good after HDR processing. In scenes where there are a lot of contrast (bright sky and a dark tunnel, for example) – HDR will be an excellent tool to bring out the details in the sky and also the dark tunnel.

1 – Have fun! Remember if you’re not having fun, chances are you won’t learn anything new – or won’t even want to. So, why not enjoy the whole process from the shoot to the post processing while you’re at it? =)

Also, don’t get discouraged – it takes 10-15 HDR shots to start to get the feel of what settings work best – both for you and for the shot. I know I had some REALLY bad HDR images in the beginning, and almost felt like I had to give it up, but I just kept playing and testing images, until I found my own style.

The Digital Darkroom

In this section I will try to delve more into the digital processing and what to avoid to give the best possible results.

5. Do not over-process the shot, making it too surreal or “out there” – this is fun for the first few times but usually not a very eye-pleasing end result. This is done by avoiding the left 2 smoothing options in Photomatix.

4. Try to reduce halos as much as possible — since they are a tell-tale sign of the HDR process, usually areas with sharp contrasts (dark horizon against a bright sky, power lines, telephone poles) will have halos around them if you’re not careful. You can reduce the hightlight smoothing or reduce the local contrast to make them go away.

3. For main subjects with vibrant colors (such as a shiny red car) – try to reduce the saturation to increase the amount of reflection visible on the surface.

2. After the HDR merging in Photomatix, I like to keep the image tones “lighter” than usual – because when I take it into Lightroom, that is where I increase the blacks and contrasts. It’s no good to me if the image is already dark coming out of the merging process.

1. Play with all the settings in your merging software – one key setting or slider could make the difference between a “wow” shot and a “meh” shot. After a while you will get the hang of the settings and which one to adjust when needed.