HDR

Haven't taken many photos with the camera HDR active, but I tried it with this one:-




I deleted the natural shot as the foliage looked moreorless the same and difficult to spot the different colours. It was taken outside the Conwy town walls on a dull day.

I've used it on the odd shot but I can't really see what it is supposed to do? Can someone with more knowledge of hdr expand on it a bit?

I think the processing has been overdone on this image. I have looked at it on my phone, tablet and a computer. There is a vibrance to the greens that doesn't look right to my eyes. It reminds me of using shadows/highlights operation in PS CC, slightly too much raising of the shadows coupled with too much reduced highlights gives this very false result.
Clearly some people favour this type of image but I am afraid that it isn't for me. Sorry.

It's supposed to work in places where there is an extreme difference in brightness. So it can combine shadow detail from the longer shot, with highlight detail from the shortest shot. Stain glass windows in old churches during the day are an ideal example of where it works well. I don't see any reason to be using it here, and any wind blowing the branches around will mess up the shot...

In many cases simply preventing the highlights from blowing out, then pulling up the shadow detail will work just fine. There is a bit more control to the HDR process if doing it in post, but all too often that's used to spoil the images!

The photographer here is an unlikely convert to the HDR cause, given his general stance on image processing matters ....

However to balance that, he has espoused the "get it right in camera" ideal .... And camera HDR mode kind of applies there ...(It's done in camera )

.... But it is still a form of image processing and is built on combining elements from 3 individual exposures. As such it depends on camera stability, so a tripod plus remote control would be the way to go really

I agree with some of the comments above and I wonder if the HDR mode was appropriate here.

I do make use of it for HDR scenes, and I find that the Auto or Level 1 settings can produce a reasonable image, without the extreme look of some of the images processed with HDR software that we see on the Web. However, even though I shoot mainly JPEGs, I nearly always apply a few tweaks as necessary in PaintShop Pro, so I don't usually accept SOOC.

There are quite a few adjustments that can be applied to shooting with the in-camera HDR Mode of recent Pentax bodies, including image alignment so that hand-held shots are possible. However, I would guess that any software would have difficulties sorting out three images if the leaves (or anything else in the scene) are moving.

Perhaps this scene could/should have been taken in a single shot, with a different Custom Image option being selected (e.g. perhaps Bright or Vibrant), and some of the parameters within it adjusted (e.g. perhaps Saturation and Contrast).

Cheers.
Philip

I've just seen this very interesting post at PentaxFourms where the photographer has found an interesting solution to the issue of very fine leaves and foliage detail with movement ..... using a combined PS plus normal image. The result seems to speak for itself. He also reports better colours from the PS one.

link

Thank you Mike for an easily digestible summary.

Pixel Shift and HDR are two different things.

HDR refers to High Dynamic Range, which involves taking multiple shots at different dark to bright exposures, and then combining the details from each of them. It's like focus stacking, but for details of different brightness's.

Pixel Shift refers to moving the sensor 1 pixel between multiple shots, and then combining the colour information obtained in each location. It results in an improved optical resolution/ higher quality image (not a larger pixel resolution though, as the end result is the same pixel dimensions) and a much larger file size.

Both are affected by movement between shots, because both rely on overlaying multiple images of the same scene. On newer firmware Pentax is detecting this movement, and turning the effect off in these locations. Expect better results of tree foliage on still days than on windy.

This is an HDR shot from memory, to highlight the details that would otherwise have been lost in the shadows.

Nigel, for your information, when I started taking photographs on a "serious" camera, I could not afford a dark room or have anywhere to have one. For this reason, and after taking advice from members of the photography club I joined, I used Kodachrome 64.
This was a slide film that could only be developed by Kodak. It used three emulsion layers, one for red, one for blue and one for green. Therefore you had to get everything right "in the camera", which is why, after 45 years of taking photographs I still try to get it right "in the camera".
I also think that a lot of photographs that jave been through "Photoshop" do not look natural.

Each to his own.

I kind of agree on quite a few levels, certainly with exposure accuracy and white balance I definately aim to capture things as best as possible with the camera. Things like cropping and minor straightening I see as just finishing touches, and as such I find are best handled on a computer.

HDR actually also is generally quite good when done by the cameras, not the least because it removes the temptation to use HDR programmes to take it too far, which seems to be a temptation. The camera effects are generally fairly mild and natural looking I think, so that's a good reason to choose them. Its really a case of deciding the best situations to try it, and of course to be ready with the needed camera support so that movement during the 3 exposures is prevented.

Thanks Richard for pointing out my HDR/PS mix up ....brain storm going on I think! I was struck by the similarities of the image on the PF thread to the one here and the need for a tripod ....somehow I failed to recognise that the technique was different .....however I hope it was an interesting link with some common aspects.

We've talked about this sort of thing a bit of the years.

You've got those inputs to the process, such as white balance, focus, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, composition, focal length of the lens used, flash, tripod, 2 second counter? etc,. These are the bits you really need to get right in camera so to speak. On the newer cameras this includes new tech options as well which weren't there in the film days, such as do I want to simulate an AA filter, or do I want to enable pixel shift on this scene?

Then you've go the processing output stage, and this is the bit that cause some confusion. The camera will create a RAW file from all the settings you've enabled up above, and then it will need to be processed to create the final output image. This is all software manipulation of the RAW file, so I don't like to see some much angst about whether this software work is done in camera, via the output settings you choose in the menu's, or afterwards on a computer via software such as Lightroom, Photoshop or other editor.

If you can get the results you want, by using the software tools built into the camera, then that's cool. If you want to use a software program to manipulate the RAW file, then that's fine too. It's all the same, only done in different places, and with varying degrees of control.

Personally, I've tried the HDR in camera, and have found anything other than Auto or Level 1 to look really over the top. I develop all my images from RAW files on a computer. I don't use any of the in camera JPEG options, but that's just my preference and it's fine by me if you want to do something different. I like to be able to apply aspects such as sharpening only to the area's that I deem need it, and find I don't get that level of control by using the in camera development tools.

We're all entitled to different workflows and as such I'm really only interested in the final images. I don't judge how you got there, and if I like the final image a lot, I might ask you for some tips on how to get my own images to look like that. There's literally no right or wrong here, life is not bound by some strict photography competition rules.

You have to remember that digital camera sensors aren't Kodachrome 64 so record the image in a different way. I understand Kodachrome films have a dynamic range of around 12 stops. That is matched or bettered with recent digital camera sensors when shooting raw but with jpegs it is somewhat worse. Using the camera's HDR function to produce jpegs can certainly help boost that range but is less flexible than doing it in a dedicated image processing program.
The in-camera HDR needs to take three separate exposures to create an HDR image, however HDR from a raw file only requires one (though more can be utilized.)