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Dec 21, 2006 
Hey Guys,
By the way, HDR stands for ‘High Dynamic Range‘ here meaning that you are capturing all different levels of light into one image, which you cannot do in a normal single shot photograph.
Getting the Images
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Firstly, you will have to collect the images that you want to turn into an HDR. This can consist of a certain amount, (here, 3), of photos taken at different shutter speeds, (different exposures), (or Apertures, but preferably shutter speeds), which you will have to take in a manual mode, (either Tv/S or M), (not sure what those mean? check HERE). You will have to take these photos with a tripod, or from a firm rest to keep the image the same each time. To start with, you’ll want to take a photo using the correct exposure, maybe even take this in automatic, to find out what shutter speeds it uses, you’ll get something like this:
Correctly exposing the grass, the fence etc. Now, the problem with this is, that I am not getting any of the beautiful orange sky here, so, I must take an underexposed shot to correctly expose the sky, so I click three stops too many and press the shutter to get this:
We can now clearly see the orange sky, and the beauty of the feather into lighter orange, yellow and eventually blue. This will end up being the sky in the end image. Now to get an even spread of light you have to do a slightly overexposed shot as well, which will bring up the detail on the plant in the foreground, and the frost etc, this looks like this:
Now, we have the makings of a great HDR image, ready for use. What will we need to do to get the combined? I will explain to you how I do it, which I feel is the simplest way to do so. Oh, and by the way, you can do more than three images if you want, if you can capture even more detail, (say if you were doing a midday HDR), you could do 5, 7, even 9 if you wanted. It all depends on the situation.
Combining the images to an HDR
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I use a piece of software called, Photomatix. This software is available in a free trial version for you to use to try out your skill in HDR, and then you can buy the full version.
You can read about the software on it’s website, but basically, it provides a simple means for you to combine images, as many as you wish, and I have been using it for a while now, and it’s always left me with great images.
Firstly, you need to gather your HDR images into a folder somewhere on your computer, or you can load them straight off of your camera if you wish, and to start off with, click here:
This will bring up a walk through stage of the program in which you can follow through easily, it isn’t very complicated. When it asks you whether or not you want Photomatix to align the photographs, check the box if you didn’t take the photos with a tripod, but if you did, and you’re confident they’re all pretty much of the same image, you can ignore this.
Now you will be left with what will probably be an uninteresting image. Using the photos from above, I’ve been left with this:
Obviously, this is in no way interesting, so what you will have to do now, is tone map the image. Firstly, click here:
And with the menu that comes up:
You will already be presented with a much more attractive image, displaying most of the light and what will already be a much more interesting and dramatic photograph. You can then tweak setting such as colour saturation, and HDR strength, I find it’s different for all images, so you just fiddle with everything until you’re happy.
Once this is done, you simply press ‘OK‘ and save the image, so that you can do whatever you want with it, upload it to Flickr for example, or post it on your blog! This is the final image that came out of the software above:
Neat, don’t you think? Anyway, I hope that this guide has been quick, yet informative, and let me know what you think!
Thanks a lot, and have a great Christmas if I don’t post before then!
Charlie - Teenage Photographer
