HDR - What do you guys think about it?

[Jim Evans]

I love searching around the net for photos for inspiration and ideas but one thing I have noticed is the glut of HDR images.  Flickr has been consumed by them.  It seems everyone is doing HDR.  Flickr's explore page is full of HDR and I'm getting sick of HDR.  Thank god no one here is really into it.

It's a cool and different art form that seems to combine photography with the look of oil paintings.  I really do think it will burn out eventually.

I guess I am just wondering how you guys feel about it.  Fad? Trend? Here to Stay?  Like it/Dislike it?  

Here is an example of a website from a guy in Austin.  

http://www.stuckincustoms.com/

Jim

[jake]

Well, I don't even really like Velvia, so I might not be the one to ask. Just like any "extreme" - fish-eye lenses, panoramas, super-telephotos - the interest isn't in the application but in the execution. A lot of these are merely applications of a technique (or less than that - application of software) to an image, and not really the execution of aesthetic finesse or artistry. Not that artistry is impossible with HDR. I've seen some nice ones, but most of them range from boring to irritating. That's about the running average for most photography - 2 good ones out of a roll of 12. The bizarre thing about Flickr overall is that it shows over and over again that there are a huge number of really creative excellent photographers out there. I look at my photos and then at the photos by others, and sometimes I want to throw my cameras in a ditch. Then again, sometimes it makes me get off my ass and go to it.

I think the interesting HDR images will come once the novelty wears off, and the dedicated users have parsed out what it does and does not do well.

[Kalkadan]

Jim - what the hell is HDR?  I looked at that site you linked and I was amazed.    Have never seen anything like it.  What on earth are they doing?

Dan

[Philip]

Jim, I think you're completely right:  it's a neat, new way to give a different look to a photograph;  it can be really good;  it'll probably become embarrassingly old-fashioned to most of the current users in a few months/years.  It'll probably also be picked up late and used forever by the bottom dwellers like me....  

I've seen some explanations of it, but haven't really absorbed them.  What does the software actually do?  It looks like a combination of low-contrast, high-contrast, low-saturation and high-saturation images, sometimes with line drawings added in.  Is that what it is?

[josphy]

HDR = high dynamic range.  Basically you take a series of exposures, and the software combines them to create a wider dynamic range than you could otherwise capture.  The simplest would be like one exposure for highlights, one for midtones, one for shadows and then combine the 3.  But I think ideally you might even bracket all the way from near black to near white and everything in between.  The examples on that website are pretty extreme -- cartoonish.  There are definitely subtler applications.

If you liked those, check out this guy's stuff: http://www.flickr.com/photos/asmundur/

Personally it is something I would like to experiment with a little bit more in the future -- I got my first taste of it this past weekend working on some of the shots I took in Big Bend -- but I'd aim for a more natural look.  Photoshop CS2 has a HDR feature, but there are some other programs like Photomatix that are really popular.  I think Photomatix has a free trial you can do.

[josphy]

Oh and you were mentioning about the high contrast and how it almost looks like there are line drawings thrown in.  If I understand everything correctly, that aspect of it has to do with the fact that you are left with a 32-bit file that you can't even really display properly, so you have to convert it to 16-bit (or 8-bit) to view it or print it.  So squeezing all of that dynamic range into 16-bits, one of the conversion methods is what Photoshop CS2 calls "local adaptation" which somehow adjusts brightness and contrast on a local level.  I'm definitely not explaining this well -- because I barely understand it myself -- but it's similar to how you can use unsharp mask to give the impression of higher contrast.

[Wimpler]

Basically you bracket the exposure (Take like 10 photographs at exposures above and below the exposure we as regular photographers would choose).  Then basically the software overlaps those images and allows you to set contrast and brightness.  However, it uses details from all the different exposures to make sure there is detail everywhere.

Atleast that's what I think it does.  I've tried it.  Had some fun using it to scan my negatives and trying to make all the detail in the negative show on my screen. Anybody else tried that?

[Kin Lau]

Some of it is neat and interesting. Certainly the way negative film (especially B&W) can be used to compress the tonal range is similar. I found the b&w shot of Naples to look the most "natural"... maybe it's because we're already accustom to the masking, burning and dodging.

Alot of it tho starts looking almost cartoonish or CG.

[SLIU]

Is this "HDR" enough?



This is Fuji 64T Tungsten slide film processed in C41. I scanned it with EPSON 4990 using the "HDR" format in Silver Fast and saved the files as 16-bit per channel tiff file. Minimum levels and curves adjustments were applied after inverting the negative image in Photoshop 6.0.

The reversed slide itself has more DR than the scanner can handle. There is planty of shadow details when I look the slide normally on light table. To see more highlight, I simple hold the film against a stronger light source.

As to the HDR in your context, I would say it doesn't look natural to my eye. My eye is spoiled by reality that I cannot even tolerate ordinary burn in and dodge. That is why I almost never do local contrast adjustment, in real or virtual darkroom.

[David Bedell]

As to the HDR in your context, I would say it doesn't look natural to my eye.

I think it's very interesting that a tool created to make photographs look MORE natural is being used primarily to make photographs look LESS natural.