One morning in November, I looked out the window to see what promised to be a gorgeous sunrise. Fortunately, my Nikkor 14-24mm lens was already on my camera, a Nikon D700, so all I had to do was grab the tripod and run out the door. I set up just behind the house and saw the bright clouds reflected in the windows of the house, giving a warm golden glow to the stone work.

One of the primary requirements for good HDR (High Dynamic Range) images is a tripod. Even if the normal exposure could be hand held, you still need to be sure that every image in the bracketed series will line up perfectly. Photomatix Pro, the software I use to process HDR images, can do a decent job of lining up images, but the result is often less than desirable if a tripod was not used – resulting in what appear to be out of focus images.

Other important considerations are:

* aperture priority (to have a consistent depth of field),
* auto-ISO off (set the lowest ISO possible to reduce noise in the images),
* and manual focus (to make sure the focal point doesn’t change from one image to the next).
* Some also recommend setting the white balance to something other than Auto. I always shoot in RAW, and this has not been an issue. If it were, the white balance of RAW images can always be changed with software.

So, I shot 7 bracketed images with 1EV spacing between each one, at an aperture of f/5.6 and the lens at 14mm.

After importing the images into Adobe Lightroom, I immediately exported them to Photomatix Pro. Photomatix default settings usually provide a very good starting point but optimum results will normally require tweaking some of the settings. In this case, I left the strength at 100%, but reduced the Luminosity slightly because the default setting was too bright.

Next, I increased the Smoothing setting slightly to get rid of the halo around the house – this is sometimes introduced by HDR processing and can add impact to some images but often results in an unnatural looking effect.

Finally, I reduced the Micro-smoothing to zero to retain texture in the clouds and stone work on the house and then saved the image back in to Lightroom for some minor tweaks.

The highlights were still a little too bright so I used Lightroom’s Highlight Recovery slider to reduce those slightly. I almost always add some Contrast and Clarity – it seems to add a bit of a sharpening effect. Then I normally increase the Vibrance, especially if there is some blue sky, to deepen and darken that sky. Finally, I’ll sharpen slightly and and do some noise reduction to make sure the image is as smooth and noise free as possible.

Producing HDR images is a lot of fun and can give some added dimension to your portfolio – so give it a try!

View Thru Mike’s Viewfinder Flickr Photostream

Camera: Nikon D60
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash

I took this photo late on a sunny and windy afternoon of my summer holidays spent in Sardegna (Italy).

Inspiration came from some pictures taken by a deviant user (cycoevolution) I’m following. I choose to use a pretty short exposure time in order to achieve this frozen-sand effect and an aperture of 5.6, wide enough to produce a blurry background and a nice zone of focus.

While shooting I was lying down prone and this helped me on keeping my camera in a safe and static position. In post production I used Lightroom to add a little bit of contrast, just to make the picture more dramatic.

Export done with Picasa 3.0

View Simone Pescina’s Flickr Photostream

By Peter Liu

Camera: Nikon D2X
Exposure: 0.2 sec (1/5)
Aperture: f/16.0
Focal Length: 29 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: No Flash

How I got this shot:

This panorama was created with four exposures on a tripod with a 3-stop ND grad set on the horizon. I used the sun as a reference point and simply panned from left to right. I had to do this quickly, as the sun was moving and I wanted it to occupy the same relative spot in all the frames. I used an ExpoDisc to set the white balance beforehand and locked the focus and exposure.

From Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5, I loaded the four frames directly into Photomerge in Adobe Photoshop CS4 and processed the panorama using the default settings. After flattening the resulting image, I used the Ruler Tool to straighten the horizon (I didn’t have time to make sure everything was level during the shoot) and did the final crop.

Then I saved the image as a TIFF, closed it and reopened it in Camera RAW, so that I could adjust the overall exposure and use Fill Light to open the shadows in the rocks. I saved the image again and imported it back into Lightroom, where I manage all my photos. As a finishing touch, I burned in the edges slightly using the Vignettes feature in Lightroom.

View Peter Liu’s Flickr Photostream

By Gary A. Stafford

Camera: Canon EOS 5D
Exposure: 1/320 second
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 100 mm
ISO Speed: 125

Bright amber-colored morning sunlight, illuminating frost-covered leaves in Corbett’s Glen Nature Park, late Fall.

HDR image using a 3-shot bracket in Photomatix Pro 3.2. Photographed with Canon EOS 5D and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens from tripod. Exposure of f/4.5 for 1/320 second, +/- 1 2/3 EV, at ISO 125. Processed in Adobe Lightroom 2.5, with post-processing in Photomatix Pro 3.2 and Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Using HDR really helped me hold detail in the highlight and the quarter-tones, while not loosing the mid- and three-quarter tones. I also like bokah, which is enhanced by both the slight movement of objects in the background and by combining the three shots in Photomatix.

View Gary A. Stafford’s Flickr Photostream