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two HDRI experiments..

Here are two HDRI experiments from my last week trip. Both photos processed with Dynamic Photo HDR (one of the programs from our monthly contests)..
 

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Hi Pavel!.....great shots+pp....I love the second shot the colours are amazing!, I can imagine an old man cycling down this road on an old bike carrying a big basket of vegitables.....or maybe its my somtimes over active imagination. O.K. i keep seeing ppl talk about HDR can you please explain what this is? thx M
 
Hi,

I love the tones in the B&W.... nicely done!

I like marky imagine a cyclist(me) riding along this road.... pack the panniers it's time for a tour :p

Can you please explain HDRI for me as well...thanks

J
 
Hi J-man and thanks for comment! The truth is that both these shots are more tone mapped pictures than HDR photos ;) True HDR images should show some details in shadow parts. But as you can see, there is not much details displayed in both pictures :D But I like their dreamy look.

HDRI is an abbreviation for "High Dynamic Range Imaging". As you surely know, current digital cameras (neither compact nor DSLR) are unable to capture full dynamic range of the photographed scene. Usually, you get burned highlights or very dark shadows. This is because the digital camera sensors are less flexible than film. But while you can recover some image information from deep shadow parts (at a cost of increased noise), it's usually impossible to recover something from burned highlights. At least not much information and definitely not from JPEG.

So the basic idea of HDRI is to get the overexposed shot(s) and underexposed shot(s) and merge them together in any HDRI program (in my case the Dynamic Photo HDR). This techniques can be especially useful for small sensor cameras with much lower dynamic range than DSLR.

There is a good reading about HDRI at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

The usual way of taking suitable shots for HRDI is EV bracketing. Many compact cameras allow EV bracketing in range +-2EV in a series of 3 or 5 consecutive shots in 1/3, 1/2 or 1EV steps. Unfortunately, the AE BKT is the weakest part of both GRDII and GX100 with their maximum BKT range at +-0.5EV. I still hope for a FW improvement in this area, because if there is one particular area where Ricoh is loosing a serious amount of customers, it's definitely HDRI. Many weaker and less powerful cameras than GRD or GX100 are capable of +-2EV BKT. And I'm sure, there is no technical reason of such limitation, because both GRD and GX100 are perfectly capable of taking shots with +-2 EV AE compensation. Basically, the AE BKT is nothing else than just automatized AE compensation ;)
 
I like both photos, especially the first one.

I have been able to achieve a similar look to your bottom photo sometimes by duplicating the photo as a layer, then blurring that layer with Gaussian blur (quite heavily; one has to experiment), then changing the blending mode of that blurred layer to "Multply", then reducing opacity of the layer until you get what you want. It's not something you'd want to overuse (it can get a bit corny looking after awhile), but for the occasional photo it can work nicely. Sometimes a very boring or flat image can have this technique applied to it with only a very, very light touch - heavy transparency of that blurred layer, and it can subtly enhance the image's overall saturation + give it a more 3-dimensional look.
 
Odklizec

Thanks for the info about "HDRI", I will check out Wikipedia & then I'll have to start exploring the creative possibilities :p

Thanks again :)

Jay
 
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