{"id":1421,"date":"2022-11-04T23:47:26","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T23:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2022-11-04T23:47:27","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T23:47:27","slug":"hdr-photography-high-dynamic-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/hdr-photography-high-dynamic-range\/","title":{"rendered":"HDR photography (High Dynamic Range)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"628\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20209-1024x628.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1422\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20209-1024x628.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20209-340x208.jpg 340w, https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20209-768x471.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20209.jpg 1300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A camera&#8217;s image sensor has one job &#8211; to record light. However, sensors generally can only capture a limited range of light from shadows to highlights.  When the actual range exceeds the sensor&#8217;s ability, that&#8217;s &#8220;high dynamic range&#8221; or HDR. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here are two recent examples where the range of light exceeded my camera sensor&#8217;s ability.  The first is a sunset.  No surprise &#8211; the highlights are super bright.  The second example is less obvious &#8211; the surface of a lake reflects blue sky in some areas and elsewhere the light simply falls off to black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The solution is the same.  Capture multiple exposures and then combine them together as a matter of post-processing.  Many cameras have this post-processing and a built-in option.  Even my smartphone camera includes that feature. The results may be disappointing.  My own experience with camera built-in HDR processing is 50\/50 at best.  The end result is so commonly disappointing that I routinely don&#8217;t trust the camera to do it.  Instead, I do HDR post-processing using software in a desktop computer.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"640\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20196-1024x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1423\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20196-1024x640.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20196-340x212.jpg 340w, https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20196-768x480.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Wake_20196.jpg 1300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This technique generally requires that the camera doesn&#8217;t move when capturing the separate exposures.  The composition of the two captures is exactly the same. If the camera moves slightly, that is commonly not a problem because the two can be aligned during post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This technique doesn&#8217;t work with video. When shooting video, the camera angle usually changes during the shoot; to shoot the scene a second time will result in a different video composition.  Two captures will never align.  For video, the solution to HDR is different &#8211; capture the shot just once but use a special camera mode that is very low-contrast, often referred to as DLog.  Straight out of the camera, that shot looks truly awful.  It must be post-processed, expanding the contrast range to something that appears correct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Probably 50% of my photography involves HDR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,20,22],"tags":[242,250,241],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital","category-photo","category-technique","tag-hdr","tag-high-dynamic-range","tag-post-processing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevindavisphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}