Tech Olive

Yes, I Jakob Griffith, am not the photography expert of Tech Olive. However, I still hold my own against Steve and Lucas and know a couple of tricks to make your photography pop out against the rest. One fascination of mine is High Dynamic Range photography, also known as HDR for short. The best way to explain it is if you’re in a very dimly-lit room with a single window, you can either take a picture with high exposure settings and get the room to show up nice and bright or use low exposure settings and get the window and whatever is outside to show up nice and bright. HDR photography gives you the ability to combine the two and get an equally brilliant shot of the room and outside in one picture.

The explanation is simple, however, the process can be a little bit more difficult. You have to decide what type of HDR photography you want to do, what programs, when and where it would be best to take the pictures, and a couple of other things. I’ll make it simple by saying my preferred method is multiple exposures. This doesn’t mean much now, but it will in a moment. The program we’ll be using is called PictureNaut and you can get it here. Tips for the pictures will also come later. Also, this How-To will be catered more towards point and shoot cameras, not SLRs.

First up is getting to know your camera. Every make and model is different, so it would be impossible to go through and discuss them all, but the concept is the same. You’ll need to be able to adjust the exposure settings. Don’t get confused with the aperture and the amount of light the camera sees, but on most cameras you can simply access a display that lets you “darken” or “lighten” an image.

Next you’ll need to find something to shoot. Find someplace that has extremely contrasting darks, lights, and shadows. I find that the sky against trees is perfect. You’ll need a tripod as the pictures you take will have to line up perfectly. Begin by setting your exposure as low as possible (usually -3.0) and take a single picture. Next, set it to the middle (0), take a picture. Finally, as high as it will go (+3.0). You can of course take more pictures at different levels, but more isn’t necessarily better.

Head back to your computer and load up the software. Hit File > Generate HDR. Select your images and put a check in “align images”. Then hit OK. Most HDRs are done at this point. You can go a bit further and hit Image > Tonemapping > Adaptive if you want your image to be a bit more adjusted towards darks or lights. When you save, it’s best to go with .TIF and then open it in Photoshop or GIMP and save it as your preferred format.

There you have it, a completed HDR image. Mine looks a little jaggity, mainly because I waited a minute or so before taking the different levels of exposure. However, You can clearly see the sky in the background, and the trees in the foreground. Whereas normally a single picture like this would be impossible.

Another HDR of mine: