I've been noticing HRD images lately, so I wanted to try it.
HDR is a range of methods to provide higher dynamic range from the imaging process. Non-HDR cameras take pictures at one exposure level with a limited contrast range. This results in the loss of detail in bright or dark areas of a picture, depending on whether the camera had a low or high exposure setting. HDR compensates for this loss of detail by taking multiple pictures at different exposure levels and intelligently stitching them together to produce a picture that is representative in both dark and bright areas.
Many of the more interesting HDR images are computer renderings that make them appear more like paintings than photographs. I'm just taking my first baby steps with this, so I'll stick to having the images look like photographs.
I don't own an HDR camera, but I don't need to. All I have to do is take 3 pictures of something and download an HDR program that will essentially take an normal exposure and put a too-dark one and a too-bright one on top of it. You MUST use a tripod so that the framing is identical throughout.
For my first attempts, I shot a normal exposure and then underexposed one image by 2 stops and overexposed another by the same amount. A program sandwiched them and the results were pretty interesting.
First, I tried it out with on Kipps Bend. The first picture is the normal, unmanipulated exposure. You might think that a too-bright image and a too-dark image might cancel each other out, but they don't.
If you look at the big chimney in the lower right of the second image, there is now good detail on the side that's very dark in the first, but the high-rises on the horizon are darker and more detailed than the first image, while the water looks the same in both.
Another HDR image - done at night - was much more striking. The scene is a bit to the left of the daylight image (Harley's is in both), but SO much more is revealed in the HDR image.
I think I'm gonna have fun exploring HDR.
(click to enlarge)