Looking past the flaws in an image based
on are own personal bias of perfection or even acceptability is not an easy
task. Many users of HDR are still learning and like many early users of
something are eager to share their first successful forays into a new form of
photography. I recently attended a show with ink jet prints hanging on the walls
with one even just labeled, Black and White as if that alone means something. Several
prints showed high levels of noise in the shadow areas and a few even had
banding clearly visible to even these old eyes. It is clear that sometimes as
we make a transition from one form of expression to another that our vision
will sometimes go beyond our grasp and the flaws in technique can be seen. And
at the same time, it is the viewer that is asked to get out of their comfort
zone and our vision out paces their grasp.
As the world of new photo skills gets
tackled and conquered by a few, they are there for many to play with, absorb,
and ruminate over. How many bad images in many forms have we endured over the
years simply because as a group we were learning new stuff. The proliferation
of images will no doubt bring to the viewer greatly interpreted views with
extreme tonal range, it will also bring many that fail to excite.
Enjoy the ride!
Eric
From: Don Bryant
[mailto:donsbryant@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, September 21, 2009
11:06 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: HDR Resurrection
Just thought I would mention that the
new Pentax K7 DSLR has built in HDR capture mode which will auto-magically
blend three separate exposures to increase the dynamic range of the camera. The
camera also has a Dynamic
Range function to help
with contrasty lighting. The K7 can also capture multiple exposures to a single
image.
Many people seem to confuse HDR
photography with Tone Mapping of multiple exposures of the same subject (or at the
very least people seem to bastardize the term HDR). In the case of the Pentax
K7 I would guess that the final image is saved as 16 bit image unlike the 32bit
images that are generated with HDR software from multiple exposures.
So it would seem that with the
introduction of the K7 HDR photography has been brought into the mainstream of
photograph technique. How long till Nikon or Canon will do the same?
Personally I enjoy looking at over the
top tone mapped images; a lot of those do fail to keep my attention for very
long and many seem to suffer from the same technical flaws. But I will spend
time looking through Flickr’s HDR collection to find the occasional
jewel. I still think it’s a valid technique even when it stretches
realistic renderings.
Don
Bryant