Canon's a fine camera, as are Nikon, Sony, and Olympus (always my favorite since my OM-2 back when I was a kid in the 70s, but disappointed now with no good DSLR offerings.) And yes, an electronic display is pretty useless in certain bright sun conditions. I just think a camera isn't worthless without a viewfinder; after all, they started out without one.

Now they have screens, Bob, and some still have viewfinders. Times change. Many decades ago they didn't have viewfinders because they hadn't been invented yet (but personally, I agree - I prefer a camera with a viewfinder.)

Kelly, I am a big proponent of HDR. Not having it was a deal breaker for me until I decided that post processing with HDR is okay if the camera has good dynamic range for most shots. If the camera records RAW, or if it does bracketd exposures, then you can easily do HDR in post processing with software like Photomatrix or NIK, or many others. As far as shutter, once you get above 1000 you're pretty much good. Very few shots will benefit from anything faster.

Back to snapsort, there is a button in the upper left of the home page to compare cameras, and on the upper right a field to just look at a single one. Also, if you click on the "recommend" button (upper left) you can click the factors important to you and let it recommend something close to your ideal. Good luck.

Snapsort is a very good site, so dig around to see what all you can do there. Take it for what it's worth, though, because it is not perfect. For example, it thinks that the Oly SZ-31 has no hi-speed video when in fact it has 60, 120, and 240fps hi-speed (I just bought one and love it.) It also calls the Canon 7D a tie with the Sony a77 while the a77 is superior in almost every category that it compares. Interesting. But it is nice to compare almost any two cameras, or to see a list of features/benchmarks that is mostly accurate.

Beautiful, actigner.

:thumbup: :thumbup: You got it!

Ambrose, And the main point I made was that just as autofocus, auto exposure, and digital photography are here and built in to our cameras, so will be HDR.

dickhrm, As I said, I am new to HDR, and my point was that it's a useful tool that is here to stay. There is a lot of info already posted here on the Hog about HDR. I see the biggest advantage as the lack of noise. You can lighten an area of a photo without HDR, but as you do you reveal embedded noise. When you take three separate photos, each with an area properly exposed, and combine the areas with proper tonal range, you end up with the best quality with lowest noise possible.

I've tried a couple of HDR programs before Photomatrix, which I like for combining multiple images. Topaz Adjust, for a single image, claims to take the image and make two copies - one higher and one lower in brightness - then use HDR on them. This won't help with the noise issue, but it's a simple one click fix for snapshots or smaller photos, one which is convenient and easier than Photoshop.

:thumbup: :D

dickhrm, The software I've been playing with will align the images, so if you have a steady subject but unsteady hands, this is not a problem. If your images are moving, you can shoot in raw, then make two copies - one over and one under, of the same image, to combine in a single HDR.

wowbmw, Great example of the utility of HDR, and nice shot! When you stood there to shoot that you could see into the shadows, right? Regular shooting could not have captured that dynamic range no matter how expensive the equipment. HDR allowed you to record that, as you could not have otherwise - and without the exaggerated artsy feel. Your picture makes my case perfectly. And very nice shot, btw.

actigner, I did a quick search through digital pics on my pc and chose the first silhouette I came upon to try out the new software I had downloaded. Of course a fill-in flash would have been better, a simple trick I regularly employ. This was a quick snapshot during a brief break on a tough backpacking trip, not planned artwork. It shows very well how HDR can save a photo or a memory! And yours is another great example. With HDR you turned what was a ho-hum snapshot into an attractive piece of art.

Must have been looking with your eyes closed. We're not talking about a masterpiece, but just a simple snapshot memory of good times - and now we can see the lake and my son beside it. Hooray for HDR!

Hello fellow Hoggers. If you take a minute to read this, I would appreciate reading your thoughts on HDR.

I got my first SLR as a teen in the ‘70s, an Olympus OM-2. It had auto exposure as well as full manual control, and I felt pressured to use manual quite a bit because many older photography purists at the time thought that auto exposure was not real photography (and from the title of this post you should see where this is going.) A few years later, autofocus started becoming mainstream but I staunchly resisted that nonsense – it wasn’t true photography, removing a key element of picture-taking. Times change. How many of us today shoot manual everything? The same good/bad has been said of digital vs. film, and of digital post processing (although back in the day we all post processed in the darkroom and that was okay.) Photography evolves.

Why is there such resistance to HDR photography? Granted, it can go a bit far, creating a surrealistic image, but such images belong in a different category and they are not the topic of this post. Used properly, HDR will enhance a photographer’s ability to accurately capture an image just as auto exposure, auto focus, and digital have done.

A good camera with good dynamic range (without HDR) can capture about three f-stops of range, while the human eye can discern about eleven – at least three times more than a photograph. So why should we limit our photos to a small portion of what was there for the taking? If we deny ourselves HDR because it’s “not natural,” shouldn’t we also deny ourselves any aperture smaller than about 3.0 because small apertures allow our photos a greater depth of field than the eye can naturally see? Of course we shouldn’t. Like long depth of field, HDR allows us to capture all of the elements that we could see naturally when looking around at what we were there to shoot, with our eyes focusing on one thing or another and adjusting to the brights and shadows.

I am new to HDR, and I am surprised at the amount of resistance to it that I’ve been reading as I research it. I downloaded Topaz Adjust last night to play with, and the two images I’m posting are of my son a few years ago (taken with a lightweight p&s while backpacking in the high Sierras). The shot would have been wasted without post work to lighten my son, so I had a choice of adjusting brightness and washing out the background, time-consuming Photoshop, or one-click pseudo-HDR with Topaz. This is a good example of the benefit of HDR, and I’m now playing with in-camera HDR with my new Olympus SZ-31mr and with bracketed shots in PhotoMatrix.

Just as all cameras now have auto exposure and autofocus, one day all cameras will have HDR.

Original, blacked-out son


HDR, one-click with Topaz Adjust

No, it's fine because of the pattern, and needn't be blurred IMHO. A distracting background has no pattern and draws your attention away from the subject.