Harvey Loc: Pioneer, CA

Thank you - this is one of the two vista points on Hwy 88 that I struggle with getting landscape and panoramas of.
Luckily I drive this road often.
Here is a color HDR of the same location.
Harvey

mechengvic Loc: SoCalo

Amen!!

Harvey Loc: Pioneer, CA

I am not an artist - I am a photographer who likes to get my photos a clear and as duplicate as what my eyes see.

However I do see some great works coming out of HDR and other PP works that have been artistically manipulated that I like also.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

It took me a few years to get to the point I am now with HDR, and my tastes keep changing. I think now that many of my images are too saturated, but I'm generally happy with the tonality I am achieving. I do like a somewhat "painterly" effect, which I know is not to everyone's taste. The nice thing about software is that there is a wide range of effects that can be achieved, from very photorealistic to bas-relief grunge.

I have been lately exploring "extreme" HDR, with very high dynamic range scenes--using 9 and even 12 EV brackets. Night HDR is also largely unexplored. Photomatix's manual deghosting makes it possible now to do HDR of scenes with moving elements.

Most of my latest work is HDR. I invite everyone to have a look at my galleries at toby-marshall.com. If anyone is interested I am happy to share what I have discovered in terms of technique over several years of pretty intensive work with HDR.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Over the past week or so, I've seen some amazing HDR images, and I've enjoyed reading shooting techniques. On that point, I'd like to ask the question. How many of you, who have done HDR, and do so with bracketed images AND hand-holding your camera? And the results?

tom hughes Loc: Phila Pa

agreed, that he spent hours, manipulating his negatives to achieve the dynamic ranges that he produced Today a Mark III can process three different HDR exposures, in camera, in about 10 seconds.

mechengvic Loc: SoCalo

Thanks for sharing your website, I enjoyed it very much.

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

After scanning the thread I did not see a mention of water bath development. Pardon me if it was already covered. It is the closest thing to HDR done with film that I can recall. It picks up where the zone system leaves off. With this technique, the developing film is lifted from the developer and lowered into water. This limits the amount of developer available to the emulsion. Developer clinging to highlight areas on the emulsion is consumed in the reaction to reduce silver while the lesser exposed areas continue to develop. The film can be re-dipped in developer and back in water again to "recharge" the sheet with fresh developer if called for. This technique greatly limits the development of the highlights and can produce a stunning range of exposure latitude. I rarely shot cut film and tried this only once or twice. I wimped out and just "overexposed" two or three stops and cut development time accordingly, usually shooting Tri-X at ASA 50 or Plus-X at ASA 25. This also drastically reduced grain. Actually, the standard ASA ratings given to different films were just a suggestion in order to get an acceptable amount of speed from the various films from any given film. Kodak's Tri-X worked best at ASA 25 (or was it 50?) according to one extensive set of tests done by Modern Photography or one of the other publications. (Another member with B/W hair may recall this.) Check out a real photographer's work that likely includes some water bath negatives: Jukka Vuokko, especially night bridge print, #17 of 32, from the current collection on the main web page.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Pre-exposure wasn't mentioned either.
--Bob

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

Thanks, Bob. I forgot about that one. It got the exposure started so the exposure for the photograph didn't have to go so far to register in the shadow areas. (When I first read about back-lit sensors, I thought that's what it was talking about, using a bit if internal light to kick-start the sensors for the shadow areas. How silly of me.)

Dodging and burning are a separate thing, though it is certainly a form of HDR technique post-negative. The real trick was stretching the latitude in the film. If the shadows aren't there or the highlights are blocked up, the darkroom can't save it. There was Victor's Intensifier, but it may have affected all of the negative, not just the thin parts.

I like the other contributor's notes about how the brain does HDR all the time without even realizing it. Non-HDR shooting is really more artificial in a sense than high amounts of HDR. -Dave

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

HDR is not even modern. I visited a civil war photography exhibit several months ago, and saw some HDR photos done by George Barnard in the 1860's. He realized way back then that if you capture the clouds the land is too dark and if you capture the land details the clouds go too light. So he did what we do: he blended exposures. Using big plates. We are lucky.

http://www.luminous-lint.com/app/contents/fra/_photographer_george_n_barnard_composites_01/

Darkroom317 Loc: Mishawaka, IN

Gustave Le Grey did the same thing. Emulsions were nearly only sensitive to blue light. Therefore when you exposed for a sky the foreground would be too dark because the sky contained so much blue light. Combining plates allowed for a foreground exposure of subject matter with very little blue and then another plate for the sky.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

After looking at Toby Marshall's work, it is probably a bad idea to post examples of anything I've ever done!

My first HDR attempt was to try to capture a tourist visit to the Grand Canyon. As a tourist, our visit was during middle of a hazy day. At the time, I was also experimenting with using video editing to make slide shows. My travel camera, a Sony RX100, will only auto bracket by 2/3 of a stop. Some shots were on a tiny tripod, many were hand held.

My goal was to avoid any "painterly" effect, but to add back some of the Grand Canyon brilliance that I could see but would be flat from the haze in photos.

I used Lightroom and NIK HDR Effects Pro 2 that has an aligning option for hand held shots.

See for yourself: http://vimeo.com/64474485

RonH Loc: Shoreview MN

Attached is an image that used the focus stacking technique. Some people think it looks some what like an HDR image.
This was taken this year at the Hog's Badland get together.
Ron H

(Download)

Harvey Loc: Pioneer, CA

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