[Clicker]

HDR filter is also in the K200D

[WerTicus]

We use HDR as a light source in a 3d environment. To make a real hdr image file usable in a professional digital environment as lighting or backgrounds you need to stack 20 odd images. The more the better. The resulting file is not a jpg its a full range open format .exr or radiance .hdr file.

My company logo is a 3d rendering lit by a HDR file. Also probably 90% of the 3d buildings in the show reel are lit by a hdr dome sky surrounding them.

[philbaum]

To each his/her own I guess. To me it looks like someone gave a 10 year old Photoshop and said: ok Timmy, have fun, paint. They also remind me of those tacky ass airbrushed license plates you see at amusement parks. Oooh, good idea. I may have to break out my old airbrush and make an HDR t-shirt of some palm trees with a tank in front of it with a nuclear orange sunset. It would be beeee-u-tiful.

Art

I very much enjoyed your images on Flickr, but, like Ivoire, i enjoyed some of the HDR you linked to as well I esp liked that one HDR that showed the "dome" of a VW in front of the dome of a mosque. nice contrast.

I think the world is large enough to allow some diversity in tastes.

best wishes,

[Art Vandelay II]

think the world is large enough to allow some diversity in tastes.

Now that's just crazy talk

[GoremanX]

I very much enjoyed your images on Flickr, but, like Ivoire, i enjoyed some of the HDR you linked to as well I esp liked that one HDR that showed the "dome" of a VW in front of the dome of a mosque. nice contrast.

I think the world is large enough to allow some diversity in tastes.

Isn't it weird how quick we are to agree with an opinion just becomes someone yells it more loudly than others? After reading some of the negative remarks regarding HDR on this thread, I was quick to dismiss it as a silly fad. Then I saw some of those HDR pics on Flickr, and I almost felt dirty and childish for liking them. But then I had the same realization; I can disregard my own silly preconceptions and just appreciate different styles.

So I started playing around with HDR. It's a whole world of fun with all kinds of awesome possibilities.

Here's a shot I took sans HDR:


And here's an HDR composite from a bracket exposure I took immediately afterwards, using a tripod:


I'm still learning, I haven't quite figured out how to get rid of the slight ghosting around the out-of-focus elements in the image yet. But this is really cool to play with. I think I'll be using exposure bracketing a lot more from now on.

[er1kksen]

As someone who dislikes most of the HDR that clogs flickr these days, I'd have to say that that one is in fact pretty well done. Nice natural looking gradations, though the lighting says "diffused light on a cloudy day" and the sky doesn't quite match that feeling if you look at it too closely (being a darkened sunny sky with a few clouds). I think with a touch more work on the sky that would be a really well-accomplished HDR.

On that note, there are groups on flickr with titles like "Natural HDR" and whatnot that are full of examples of the potential of HDR techniques to truly enhance the art of photography.

All that aside, an emphasis on HDR in the cameras does not strike me as a good idea except as a marketing ploy. Either increase the already excellent bracketing options to make it easier for users to do good HDR work themselves, or give us a true HDR-file output that combines three or more RAW exposures to give us a wide dynamic range in a single RAW file to be tonemapped as the user sees fit. Ideally, make it nicely compatible with the usual RAW convertors and allow the user to define what exposure spread they want.

[PentaxPoke]

I completely agree with er1. HDR is so overdone in so many places it is like listening to bad pop music. I really like how you did it Goreman. It is subtle, and brings out some interesting detail in the canon.

I was just curious, in this particular picture, is HDR necessary? In other words, is it possible to do what some call "fake HDR" which basically involves changing the sliders so you bring up the darks, and bring down the lights? Maybe not because it is really dark under that canon in the first shot.

[GoremanX]

...I'd have to say that that one is in fact pretty well done. Nice natural looking gradations, though the lighting says "diffused light on a cloudy day" and the sky doesn't quite match that feeling if you look at it too closely (being a darkened sunny sky with a few clouds). I think with a touch more work on the sky that would be a really well-accomplished HDR.

Actually it was a bit of both. Everything across the lake was horribly overcast (hence all the clouds in the shot), but everything on my side of the lake was a bright blue sky with sun blazing. Very odd, that's rarely the case. Made for weird pictures that day.

[GoremanX]

I was just curious, in this particular picture, is HDR necessary? In other words, is it possible to do what some call "fake HDR" which basically involves changing the sliders so you bring up the darks, and bring down the lights? Maybe not because it is really dark under that canon in the first shot.

That first shot was very carefully manipulated in PP to try and bring out all the detail from the RAW file. I managed to get all the pixels within the dynamic range with no clipping whatsoever, but there are still areas of the picture that have very little detail (like under the canon). Bringing out more shadow detail meant killing the contrast, which also meant flattening out the clouds and the snow. I purposely picked a tricky shot to try and get a better idea of what HDR can do.

As I said, I'm still learning, and I can't afford the fancy schmancy HDR software tools. I did this using open source stuff entirely from the command line through trial-and-error. I just found a neat GUI that allows me to do most of this stuff while actually seeing results, so that should help. But it's still bug-prone beta-quality software.

[blende8]

That Pentax is not really interested in HDR is clear from the fact that they eliminated the bracketing button from the K7.
This is such a useful thing on the K20 and is the reason why I did not change to the K7 yet. I use bracketing all the time.
In the K7 it is hidden somewhere in the menu.

Please, Pentax, give us the bracketing button back!

[GoremanX]

That Pentax is not really interested in HDR is clear from the fact that they eliminated the bracketing button from the K7.
This is such a useful thing on the K20 and is the reason why I did not change to the K7 yet. I use bracketing all the time.
In the K7 it is hidden somewhere in the menu.

erm... yes, it's hidden deep in the drive menu, which is all of one button press away.

- press the "Drive Mode" button on back of camera
- select "bracketing"
- ...done

I feel like one of those old iMac commercials describing the 3 steps to setting up a new iMac: "There is no step 3!!!"

[panoguy]

Like WerTicus, I use HDR for image-based lighting in 3D rendering, so most of the "bad tonemapping" complaints are just noise to me. I've had to spec a tonemapping operator for one of our products, and after going over 72 TMOs we concluded that while the results are "a matter of taste" there are some operators and settings that have almost no value for our product. Just use HDR tonemappers judiciously and to get the "look" you want.

As a counterpoint to these constant discussions, I like to provide this link to a diatribe by one of the most well-known scientists and inventors of HDR tonemapping out there: (Erik Reinhard)

Flickr HDR

Great guy, but Flickr makes him cranky...

[GoremanX]

Keeping all the info in this thread in mind, here's a result I'm happy with:



I like the contrast, the lighting, the non-exaggerated snow shadow, and the distant clouds. Also, I managed to eliminate ghosting (my images were not aligned properly initially).

And I love the fact that I can do all this for free.

[er1kksen]

I like the new interpretation as well, very natural looking, and in fact it almost looks like the result of a well-placed pop of fill-flash (something that would probably have been impossible to achieve in such bright lighting conditions). I know what you mean about the strange lighting; in fact, the first HDR version reminds me very strongly of some of the spectacularly strange lighting we seem to get here on the lake during the winter. Kind of like this. I really need to get down to the lake one of these evenings now that I'm back home.

[jpzk]

Hi Phil, Jack Howard here. There's a lot of ground to cover quickly, so hold tight.

Here's what I said about the K-7 in its section in the HDR All-Star Story:

The 14.6 mp APS-C Pentax K-7 is the first SLR with a true in-camera HDR processing function that captures 3 shots at +/-3 and tone maps a single JPG output image, but that’s not the reason why the Pentax K-7 made this list. Here’s the reasons: One-touch Auto Exposure Bracketing burst setting options for a 3 or 5 shot AEB burst capture at up to 2 EVs for a very wide dynamic range capture sequence in under 1 second with fast shutter speeds and DNG Raw option for instant compatibility with all HDR generation programs.



In-camera HDR captures 3 shots at -3, 0 and +3 in under a second. But with AEB can go to five shots at -4, -2, 0, +2 and +4 in under one second. You've got to combine the Max EV spacing and number of shots to get the full span.

And the K-x?

The full production K-x running FW v1.0 sitting right in front of me can AEB 3 shots at up to 3 EV spacing–the same spacing it uses for in-camera HDRI.

Please note well that NOWHERE in HDR All-Stars or other pieces I've written on the K-7 do I ever state that Auto Exposure Bracketing (not in-camera HDR) on the Pentax K-7 can be spaced at 3 EVs.

Honestly, Pentax is worlds ahead of many companies when it comes to AEB features. The most economical camera in Canon's lineup that matches the K-x AEB span is the 7D. And the 5DMII only does 3 shots at 2 EVs! Nikon has an SLR in market that doesn't even have an AEB sequence, and a handful of newer names in the photo biz totally hobble AEB sequences even in flagship cameras.

Does that make sense now?

On another note, I've started a group on Facebook about HDRI, and the forums on Christian Bloch's HDRLabs are a great source of information from my fellow Rocky Nook author.
Stop by!

~~~~

PS: GormanX: In-camera HDR with these two models works best with truly wide dynamic range scenes. Otherwise, it can produce halo artifacts.

~~~

Specifically:

One-touch Auto Exposure Bracketing burst setting options for a 3 or 5 shot AEB burst capture at up to 2 EVs for a very wide dynamic range capture sequence in under 1 second with fast shutter speeds and DNG Raw option for instant compatibility with all HDR generation programs.

In-camera HDR captures 3 shots at -3, 0 and +3 in under a second. But with AEB can go to five shots at -4, -2, 0, +2 and +4 in under one second. You've got to combine the Max EV spacing and number of shots to get the full span.

For the folks commonly known as "I read the manual and I am still confused", like me,
how do you set up the K7 that way?

If not you, maybe someone else could answer that or should I go to the Beginner's Sub-forum?

Thanks.

JP