Right… You’ve probably noticed by now that I am a fan of HDR. I’ll now try and share a few of the pitfalls I have found as I’ve messed around with it
1. Go easy, tiger…
The first few HDRs you make will probably be pretty extreme. As you get more used to the technique, you might find yourself getting sick of looking at your initial attempts, which could start to look a bit garish. Often the thing that draws you to HDR in the first place can become the thing that makes you hate it. I’ve found that mellowing my settings as I get used to the technique has helped my photography a lot.
The picture I posted on the main HDR tutorial is below:
Now - I included that because it’s a nice image, and it’s very obviously HDR. That’s both a good and a bad thing. For the purposes of a HDR tutorial, it’s good to see a shot that really shows off what HDR can do in an obvious way - but for me, I’d rather people looked at a picture and said “Wow, great photo!” rather than “Wow - great HDR!”.
The thing I’m trying to learn here is to use more the HDR technique a little more subtly, so I get an image I want without it looking outstandingly unreal or overprocessed. Whilst HDRs can look amazing, you do get bored of seeing them after a while, unless they are done with a little thought and style.
My second trip to a church, I toned it down a bit, and this is one of the images I produced:
Now - I think that’s a lovely image. It’s not as in your face arresting as the first one, but I think it’s a better photograph. Taken without HDR, it wouldn’t have looked half as nice - the windows and walls are completely blown out, and there is little detail in the roof ornaments and alcoves. But - looking at that image, I don’t know if I’d guess it was a HDR. Would you (a genuine question)?
That, to me, makes it more of a success. If I can take great photos that wouldn’t be possible without HDR, and make them so that first and foremost they are obviously a pleasing image rather than obviously HDR, then I am a happy chap.
What I do is have two saved settings in photomatix - one called “Extreme” and one called “Subtle”. Then, when I batch process a pile of images, I choose the one I fancy and see what comes out. If any look promising, I reopen the saved .hdr files in photomatix, and reprocess and tweak. Normally if a picture works in extreme, I’ll try it in subtle just in case, and vice versa.
2. HDR is no substitute for thinking about your shot
I am very guilty of this. Bang my camera on AV, set up AEB, frame what I hope is going to be a nice image and fire off 3 shots. Then move on to the next one.
This *can* work fine. But it’s really no substitute for stopping and thinking. Earlier this week I spent a glorious afternoon in dovedale, and 90% of my shots were ruined because I was too lazy and just did that. Look at this one for example:
The sky, as you can see, is completely ruined. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a good pic anyway, but if I’d thought about it a little, and then checked for blown highlights on the camera afterwards, I would have saved it.
I’ve made a little promise to myself that what I will do in the future is:
- Use manual mode with spot metering
- Consciously choose a point in the picture that I want to meter off, and meter off it
- Take the pictures, check them for blown highlights, and take more if need be
The first two things are what I should really always do anyway, HDR or not, if I am taking carefully composed photographs. There are occasions where AV, TV, P or even full auto are completely sensible - but if you are on AV and happen to accidentally meter off a dark log, your picture’s likely to suck.
In short, use your brain!
3. Don’t lose heart!
It’s very easy to look at other photographers work and despair because you see all their fantastic photographs, and then look at your huge pile of failures and know in your heart you’ll never be as good as them. But remember - all you see of other photographers work is the stuff they choose to show you. You see all your failures, and none (or few) of theirs. So don’t lose heart - remember everyone else is human too, and if you enjoy taking pictures, then keep plugging away, and you’ll improve.
It’s also worth remembering that some subjects will just not work as decent HDRs. It’s hard to really nail it down, but don’t be shocked if lots of your images just look terrible, no matter how much you twiddle. It’s partly suitability for the medium, and partly just some photographs will always look lame. Everyone takes them, so don’t let it bother you. Concentrate on your successes, and try and learn from your failures.
I myself go through phases - a bit like a sine wave of confidence. I start off thinking I’m crap, then go out and try really hard and get some good photographs, then start to get more confident. I get more and more confident until I get lazy, and then I take a whole pile of terrible photographs and think I’m terrible again. Which makes me try harder, and the whole cycle continues.
I take AN AWFUL LOT OF PHOTOS. I probably put 10% up on my flickr account. Perhaps 2% of them get on here. I suspect most “serious” photographers do the same - you get a good eye for what you like, and become quite severe when throwing away the dross.
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It would be useful for us HDR novices if you could explain how you varied the settings to get the improved church interior and be a liitle more specific about how to avoid the all-to common ‘grey sky’ effect.
Is it not possible to remedy the latter by using the ‘Highlights Smoothing’ slider in Photomatix?
Hi Angus.
The mellower settings are just a case of having strength/saturation down nearer the 50 mark than the 100 mark, and the usual twiddling with the white/black/gamma sliders until it looks nice. I’ll try and dig out the real values I used at some point.
If you’ve got completely blown highlights in all your raws, then highlights smoothing won’t save the day as there’s no detail there to save - granted, you’d get a block of solid white rather than that nasty grey mess from my sample, but the sky would still be knackered at the end of the day
In the case of that shot (the portrait orientation church one), the settings are:
strength 80
saturation 55
luminosity 0
smoothing very high
microcontrast 5
white point 2.290
black point 0.132
gamma 0.93
micro smoothing 2
everything else on 0.
Dan, could not agree moe.What you have said about “shooting atitude” is so right. With photography you have to keep plugging .Just watched a video from a monthly magazine & tutorial was made on the use of “off camera flash” this professional could not have produced the images shown based on his style of shooting .
Good advice,
Steve F.
Cheers Steve - aye - it’s a funny old game. Still, as long as it’s fun I’ll keep snapping
Hi,
I notice that some shots just do not work at all in HDR even if taken on the same day in the same light and even after adjusting white balance in Lightroom. I can’t fathom it out. I’m sure it’s light but can’t pinpoint why. Any ideas?
Hi Bryan
There’s too many reasons to hazard a guess without having the raws and some idea of the effect you’re going for, really. One chap that was having problems earlier was using jpegs rather than raws as the source files for the HDR - that can make things look pretty lame.
Do you know you can adjust the white balance in photomatix, before the process? That might help. It’s at the bottom of the big dialog.
If you want, you could send me the raws over and I could have a twiddle myself, but I can’t promise miracles!
Hi Dan,
Great article about HDR. I’m experiencing myself too lately, always on tripod though. I should try to do the trick without once.
I totally agree with you on the first HDR’s you create… you often over do it with colors and effects and when you move on with HDR your images improve! A Lot!
I also must say the same thing Bryan wrote… Last weekend I took HDR shots (3 auto brack -2/+2) of a specific angel of an office, I moved my tripod to another corner to shoot it from different angle… How hard I may try, I don’t get the same HDR result of both shots. Don’t know what went wrong, I can send you the raws though (can I email you?). Also other annoyments are halows in trees, cables in the air… they appear even in very soft tone mapping settings…
I’ve been told taking more than 3 raw shots improves HDR, like 7 or 8 but I didn’t get better results though.
one last thing, I shoot in A-mode so shutterspeed is given my my D50 but how should I take my first shot? I can aim with spot/central on different parts of a building (white and black walls, blue sky, green grass)… I guess all these have different results, is there any rule for this?
Thx
Best,
Jim
Hi Jim - lot of stuff there
I’ll try and deal with it in order.
1) Without a tripod, you just have to make sure you set the “align source images” option in photomatix. On the later versions there are two ways of doing this - horizonal/vertical shifts, or matching features. Both have different effects so try each - sometimes one will work, sometimes both will work, sometimes neither will work. If you strike out, try taking out the more aberrant image and seeing if you can still get anything good. Failing that, try with a single shot, you can still sometimes pull something out of the bag like that.
2) I think the reason some HDRs work and some just won’t no matter what you do is to do with the dynamic range you’ve captured in your images. Depending on the spot you’ve metered from (the bit that decides what is 18% grey/normal brightness), you might find you have more or less dynamic range (ie. if it’s a bright scene and you meter off something dull, you won’t get much dynamic range as most of your bright will be blown out etc). It may not always be this… my technique is to just take lots of pics, and you gradually get a feeling for what will work and not. I don’t really have a magic wand here, so suspect I wouldn’t be able to produce anything better than you can. One thing i almost always do is tweak the images after photomatix has produced them - to sort out the white balance/contrast - that may do something for you, dunno
3) Halows… do you mean halos? Annoying bands of lightness around things? They tend to be caused by low light smoothing - I almost always have that set to VERY HIGH.
4) If you have a scene with a very high dynamic range (ie. dull shadows with detail, and bright skies), taking more than 3 pics can help a lot. I don’t do it that often though, because it’s a bit of a pain in the arse, and you can sometimes end up with a flat looking HDR (if you think about it, it’s having to compress a vast range of different brightnesses into a single viewable pic, so it’s going to make some compromises). One good thing about taking more than 3 is that you can just pick and choose if you want (ie. choose any 3 of the pics, or however many you want, to make your HDR).
5) When shooting in auto mode, the metering will depend how it’s set up in your camera. I normally have mine on spot or centre weighted, so I know that whatever I point the camera at is the thing that will be the right brightness. It’s definitely worth trying manual - it’s not that much of a bitch, and can stop you making some of the mistakes you sometimes get on auto. If you’re white, then pointing the camera at the back of your hand is a good way to estimate a good setting. Set the aperture you want, point the camera at the back of your hand (either in sun or in shade, depending on the makeup of the scene you are shooting) and then twiddle the exposure time until the camera says the exposure is right, then take a few shots and see how you go.
Where to meter from is something worth a book in itself really. I’m no expert
The back of the hand trick is useful - but more often than that I just choose a part of the scene that looks roughly in the middle of the brightness range, and meter off that.
Hope that’s of some help
Hi Dan,
Thx for you reply! You got me some new ideas to improve my HDR’s.
I always use the “align source images” button so I’ll try shooting without tripod, I never did actually. I guess I’ll have to use mutiple shots then… Now I use a remote control with my tripod.
I’ll try this, taking more shots and combine later for HDR, see which one comes out best. I’ll check out metering on (spot or center) on 18% grey like parts in sight.
What I do now is not shooting in auto mode but arperture mode.
what I’m gonna try is to get a good metering and set these to manual. I’m gonna leave these settings for taking shots from different angles… see how that works out. Good thing is to get metering on 18% gray or middle brightness indeed… I guess the picture I told you about hasn’t got the right brightnesses as the one shot before from different angle… if this doesn’t help, I might try the white balance thing yes to get the same results
I’m not a fan of using more than 3 shots either, I saw a lot of pics, great HDR’s, only taking from 3 shots so…
I’ll check out the halo thing too
thx mate
I use the tripod 95% of the time (for HDR), but sometimes if I’m out on my bike, or a walk or something, and I see something I want as HDR, it’s worth trying handheld if you keep as steady as you can. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but often it does. this pic for example was handheld.
Aha - aperture mode is probably my most common too. One good tip is to get into the habit of checking the pics on the back of the camera to see if the bits you care about do appear do be different brightnesses on each pic, and that you haven’t got any blown highlights. I remember to do that most of the time now, and it helps
Oh aye - and I find if I have the camera on… god… I don’t know what the mode is called actually… “continuous” perhaps? Where you hold down the button and it just keeps taking pictures… that if I’m on AEB, it knocks out three pics nice and quickly just by holding the button down.
this is a great tutorial, i’ve only been experimenting with HDR for about 6 months, so far its been a bit hit and miss
I’d be very interested to learn about your settings for that top image, the horizontal church interior, i’ve been trying to get that kind of look for a lot of photos recently but im having trouble trying to nail the right kind of settings!
and also, for a photo such as that one, what stops do you meter at? i tend to do the basic -2, 0 and +2, and im curious as to what the advantages are when metering 5, 7 and even 9 exposures,
any advice would be hugely appreciated!
Hi Dave
Thanks! HDR is a bit hit and miss, I find, so don’t let that get you down. Some things work great, some things are always going to look bad
The trick, like with the rest of photography, is to TAKE LOTS OF PICTURES!
That top picture (I haven’t got the exact settings any more) was probably 100% strength, 100% saturation, very high light smoothing and probably nearly top luminance too. Not a subtle pic. Those settings aren’t always that useful to you though, as two pics of different subjects with the same settings can look completely different if the subjects are different enough!
That was probably a -2,0,+2. I don’t take very many shots with a wider range. The advantage in doing so is if you have a very wide range of brightnesses to cope with… but most of the time that’ll be because the sun is in the shot or something, and those pictures tend to turn out pretty lame anyway!
The only really good advice I can give, I already have really. Take far too many pictures, and play around with them, and then try and learn from your successes and failures. As hopefully comes across from the way I write, I’m very much a learner too - I just happen to be a learner with a blog
Thanks for the tips, i was quite freaked out when i read the lens section this website by the way, you have the exact same equipment as me, and you even bought everything in the same order i did, right up to the sigma 10-20! coincidence eh?
I agree with take a lot of pictures–for any type of photography. Digital makes it easy to get good shots because you can see the pictures right away. I shot for a newspaper and shot and shot till I got the picture–often things happen of interest and if you snap a shot and move on, you miss it.
Hi, I have a Nikon D60 and want to try working with HDR, but the D60 doesn’t have AEB. Do I need to take three separate shots, shot 1 being at correct exposure, shot 2 with +2 exposure compensation and shot 3 -2 exposure compensation and then use align source input to allow for any ‘movement’ between shots? I’ve only had the camera a couple of weeks but when I bought it I didn’t know about AEB so didn’t give it due consideration when making my purchase.
Hi Pauline
You don’t need to be exact, no - you can twiddle the exposure time dial between shots, and as long as the exposures are of different brightness you should be fine. Only change the exposure time, not the aperture size (unless you deliberately want a strange effect, which some people enjoy) and you should be fine. The only downsides are it takes a bit longer, and you are in danger of moving the camera little on the tripod between shots. Also, without AEB, taking handheld HDRs is presumably nigh on impossible - I certainly couldn’t be trusted to hold the camera steady for that long
Have fun!
dan
thanks i really enjoyd reading all you comments
its good to learn with others.
Thanks Rob. Check out my mate Andy Stafford’s site too - he’s a lot more patient than me - more of a “Proper photographer”
Thanks for encouraging us to try different settings in Photomatix to tune down the more extreme HDR effects, especially the hint about highlight smoothing, which hopefully will reduce the sky halos around trees, etc. But in honesty, looking at the photos of the church, the landscape version to me looks more like a straight photo, and the portrait more HDR-like. I know they were done under different lighting conditions, but the former has the washed-out windows and dark shadows of a standard photo, while the portrait version has the flatter look of HDR, what with the held window detail and the shadow detail.
Would you not agree that the former looks extremely unreal though? It looks like a still from a computer game to me, whereas the second looks more like something found on planet earth.
Hi Dan, great tutorial and insite into HDR manipulation. Having recently been seduced by Panasonics GH1 I’m now wondering whether I’m likely achieve good results when I explore the HDR world - the stats indicate: Auto bracketing Frames of 7 - Minimum EV step (exposure value?) of 1/3 with Maximum step at 2/3; Max EV range with AEB at 4; with max burst rate at 3fps - am I going to be hamstrung before I get started? m. thanks great stuff tho
That sounds a lot better than my camera, so I’m sure you’ll be OK
The nice thing about HDR is that even if your pictures make crap HDRs, you have all those different versions of the pic to pick and choose from, and merge manually if that floats your boat.
thanks for that Dan - looking forward to getting started - I’m on MacOS (10.5) wheres the best place to get Photomatix Pro from - how to pay etc
I just got it straight from here
http://www.hdrsoft.com/order.php
I can’t remember how I paid - I suspect there’s just some secure credit card stuff once you check out - although you may as well get the free demo first, to see if you actually like it - that’s from here
http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html
thanks again - very helpful
Like many here, I’ve been playing with HDR for a while (thanks for the introduction and discount code, btw). You don’t seem to post-process the RAWs before dragging them into Photomatix. I’ve found lots of shots suffer from noise (particularly in grey skies) which can’t be reduced enough by the programme, so I’ve first reduced noise using Raw Therepee, at the same time making a few other adjustments. After all, if your settings are wrong shooting RAWs (white balance, picture style etc.) you’re surely going to get an inferior result unless you deal with this before using Photmatix. I’ve also tried, after reading it somewhere, that saving your RAWs as TIFFs before processing in Photomatix, gives good results, though I don’t pretend to know why? Any thoughts?
It’s not something I’ve ever done, because every program I’ve used to work on raw files doesn’t actually alter the raw file, but rather stores the things you’ve done to the image in some way, so that when you export the raw to an image format such as jpeg or tiff, it looks right.
I’m not certain this is the way it works, but it’s my understanding. Are you sure you are actually altering the raw files? If you are, could you tell me what you are editing them in?
Durr - i just noticed you said raw therapee - I’ll take a look at that.
I’m looking at Raw Therapee now, and I can’t see any way to save a raw file - which rather confirms my suspicions that the raws remain inviolate. Do you drag your raws into photomatix, or convert them into jpeg/tiff and drag them in?
Yeah, I’m making some adjustments in Raw Therapee (usually noise reduction, picture style and white balance - if necessary), before saving them as TIFFs and dragging these into photomatix. That way I’ve effectively done what I would be doing if I was editing a single RAW file before saving as a JPEG, leaving photomatix to do the HDR magic! I suppose what I’m saying is, if I mistaken shot in RAW using the wrong white balance and picture style and simply used the raw RAW in photomatix wouldn’t I be using three dodgy shots, increasing the chances of a duff result? As you can tell, I’m not great at getting my head round this stuff!
The thing with raws is that white balance isn’t so relevant, because you can tweak it losslessly after the fact (as opposed to JPEG where you lose detail if you do so). “Picture Style” is, I suspect, just whatever camera you are using choosing certain ISO, aperture and shutter settings for you depending on what option you choose. As I tend to work in AV or Manual, it’s not something I know much about, but suspect that’s the case.
What you are saying is possibly a fine plan - if photomatix isn’t managing to pull a decent image out of your raws, then your way will probably give you a much better chance of getting a good result. Certainly, if you’re happy with your results, then do a happy dance - that’s what it’s all about after all.
Noise tends to be a result of either high ISO or dark areas of the image being pumped up too high in brightness - so you might find it a little better if you stopped using those picture style modes, stuck to the lowest possible ISO (50 or 100 depending on your cam) and either take enough exposures to cover all the brightness range well, so that you don’t get any overpumped dark areas that will be noisy, or just be happy with adjusting the HDR so that some areas remain dark still in photomatix.
You may or may not have noticed, but I’m far from an expert myself - I’m just sharing what little I do know and trying to help people along the way - so my advice is always best taken with a pinch of salt
I’ll give your approach a go at some point, though - I might find I like it
It certainly doesn’t seem to be an exact science so I guess the old maxim ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ might be relevant here! Thanks for the advice (useful as ever).
Sorry, just noticed I’ve posted anonymously in the last two posts!
thanks for this fella, it’s truly spectacular!
Fantastic guide man, many thanks opened up a whole new avenue for me, much appreciated
I really enjoyed this tutorial. Downloaded the Photomatrix demo and piddled with some pics all evening and have not a darn thing to show for it. My favorite part was the last few paragraphs: “3. Don’t lose heart!” I really needed that right about now! LOL! Thanks for the great info. I will indeed “keep plugging away!”
I’ve just started with h.d.r. and some times when I download pictures all I get is a screen full of noise is it something I am doing wrong any help would be appreciated. Great tutorial really enjoyed watching it
Hi David
I’m not really sure. At what point does the screen full of noise appear:
- Are the pictures broken when you download them from your camera to the computer?
- Are they broken when put into photomatix and displayed as the preview that you tweak?
- Or are they just broken at the very end of the process, when you produce the final jpeg or tiff from photomatix?
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that your camera might produce raw files that your computer can’t read, and that the ones that come out OK are jpegs and the broken ones are raw - but that may be completely wrong
Is there a reason I can’t print my HDR images?
The print icons are grayed out - CS3 on a MAC.
Cheers
Dave
Hi Dave
No idea I’m afraid - I don’t have photoshop. I can’t see whey there would be.
Hey , you said to spot meter… I understnad light metering but how do you do it on the camera? I have a D70 and have worked out which different settings you can having for light metering.. but how do you actually do it? Great tutorial by the way!!
Howdy - dan here (can’t find my login - on the wrong computer!)
Anyhoo - if it’s on spot metering, when you point the camera at something, it’ll just be taking a very small sample of the middle of the viewfinder to work out the correct exposure. Point it at something you want to expose correctly (ideally on manual) and twiddle with your aperture/exposure dials until you have a correct exposure. Recompose your shot and shoot.
On Canons, you can do this in AV/TV/P modes as well, and press the * button to “fix” the exposure it worked out in memory, and then recompose the shot and shoot again without losing the setting (i think it keeps it for 5 seconds or something). There’s probably something similar on your Nikon.
It’s a funny old thing is Metering - it may seem like it makes no difference at all a lot of the time, but if you are patient about things it can work wonders to understand what’s going on.
I should at this point admit that I’m not that patient, and do tend to forget what mine’s on nowadays