U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: HDR Resurrection

Re: HDR Resurrection

A prototype camera capturing about 15 stops range was shown at Siggraph about 7 years ago. So the technology has been there a long time. Just hard to bring the cost down to consumer level but it will happen. We are seeing a gradual but a definite increase in the dynamic range in cameras that are on the market.

To be able to capture all light levels out there and then manipulate their tonal relationships at will has always been the dream of photographers. Doesn't matter what method or name we call the steps we must take to achieve that. The problem arises when it becomes an end in itself and becomes a religion. HDR and Tone Mapping can be very useful, and a lot of fun, but using it well so that it actually helps your picture is, well, no piece of cake.

Anything excitingly new attracts over-use and over-exposure. Remember the folks who pronounced the death of traditional art and photography when MacPaint first came out?

Say Don, how's your boat? Aren't you guys in Atlanta having severe flooding?  

Sam Wang


On Sep 22, 2009, at 12:05 AM, Don Bryant wrote:

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