Quick question or two about HDR

Playing around with the new Z5 and I ran across the HDR feature. Clovispup and I are planning on another trip to Boneyard Beach at sunrise tomorrow, and I'm thinking this might be a great candidate for HDR. I discovered that Lightroom has HDR merging using bracketed images. The Z5 has HDR in camera with the option of saving the individual RAW images. I'm thinking the in camera may be the way to go. Simple, and since I get the individual images, I can merge them in LR if I want. It will also give me feedback in the field as to what is going on. I'll make a test today to see if I get the individual RAW files I want. If not, I'll go for the conventional auto bracketing mode. Most of these sunrise photos require extensive editing, and often the compromises leave me somewhat unhappy with detail in either the shadows or highlights.

The main question I have is that the images will have waves in the frame. I know that in LR I can control the amount of deghosting. Many like to choose settings that intentionally use long exposures in order to give a fog effect to the waves. If I take 5 images over the course of say a second or two, will it give me a similar effect to a 1 to 2 second exposure, assuming I go for no deghosting? I looked at a number of the posts here and saw a picture that included falling water. Of course, it was full daylight and a 1/200 of a second, but the moving water looked like a single 1/200 shot. My assumption is that this photo used a fair amount of deghosting.

I'll try the HDR anyway, but would be nice to know what I'd be likely to get going in. I'll post results when I get them.

Here is a before and after using my old D3400.



View attachment 371498

OK, just to add, I tried some practice shots in the yard just now. When I use in camera HDR, it does save the RAW images as well. I can control the amount of exposure differential I want, or let the camera decide. The fly in the ointment is that it only takes two images. I may try that for one or two picture tomorrow, but I think I'll just auto bracket most everything I shoot. I also cannot leave the camera in auto bracket mode to use HDR mode. It's one or the other. Too much trouble to switch back and forth for anything other than a quick test or two. One issue at this shoot is the light changes quickly. You have to be ready to shoot, and then move to another scene quickly if you want to get a decent number of images before the good light is gone. There is plenty of time after the sun is fully up, but the prime time is short. You have to be ready with a plan, or get left behind.


This brings up another question. Should I bracket 5 images, or just do 3? I plan on using 1 stop increments. Unless experience dictates that I'm wasting time and card space, I will plan on using 5. According to the camera, I have space for 2600 pics on the card. The only issue in my mind is that early on in the sunrise timeline, the shutter speeds are rather low. This could slow down shooting. Of course, these are the conditions where I most need extra dynamic range. If nothing else, I can use 5 this time, and then try both 5 and 3 in lightroom and see the difference.

I have expressed my opinion before that HDR is overused and really only needs to be done with some special circumstances. A scene with waves and potentially moving clouds will bring some fuzziness into the final image, just a matter of how much.

I had to go back to 2012 for a time when I purposely took an exposure bracketed set for HDR purposes of a scene with water. However it was a very still morning at this riverbank. This is really going back to a D80 body and Tamron 18-270 glass, so it's not a case where the sensor is even in the same league as a new DSLR body.



That was the edit I gave it in 2012. 3 bracketed images put to an HDR filter. The clouds gained a bit of a blur to them and there was no real waves to begin with.

Now today I revisited the original Raw files. I just took the normal exposure and processed with a modern version of RawTherapee that was not available to me then. No HDR, I simply stretched the dynamic range of the single file. You can do this with the curves tool or in my case it was sliders for Shadows/Highlights. I did not really try to match the colors of the original with the white balance, but instead used my more recent taste.



Now we have an even lighter shadow level and the clouds are more crisp. I cannot remember when I last used exposure bracketing at all, but it has been a lot of years. I still contend HDR is more fad and hype than tool.

I am hoping that moving to the full sized sensor in my new Z5 will noticeably extend the dynamic range of my images. Still, sometimes you have to try out the new tool in the box to see what it's good for, and what its not so good for. I will try and be careful not to use this as a hammer on everything.

I tried HDR a couple of times to results that were 'meh.' I think my photography skills are lacking, so the images I work with are, 'meh' to begin with. Working on it.
Please post some final images. I would like to learn more. I figure anything I learn will transfer when doing other things.

Good bad or indifferent, I will post some results.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Supposed to be partly cloudy. I just hope we can get down to the beach and set up before the light show starts. It's a Wildlife Management Area and the gates open at 6:00 AM. Sunrise is supposed to be at 6:50. There is a 15 minute drive to the parking lot and a 1/4 mile walk to the beach. DST next month will reset things for a little while, and we can have another couple weeks when we can make it. Unfortunately, you have to take tides into consideration, so ideal times are about 2 weeks apart. Then there is weather to contend with.

Still, it's a wonderful outing with the side benefit that it can result in some nice pictures. Of course time spent pursuing a common interest with my daughter is priceless.

I've never tried HDR in Photoshop or even in camera. Instead luminosity masks are my preference. That way I get to choose what I want rather than Photoshop or the camera deciding for me.

Uggh, 4:00 AM. The sacrifices we make for our "art".

Coffee!!!!!!!!!!

Boneyard Beach here we come.

OK, got back a little while ago. Had a great time. Being a Saturday, the beach was much more "crowded" than the weekdays when we were there before. Crowded as in maybe 6 or 7 people at a time on the beach. Not an issue at all, except you had to make sure you weren't in someone's shot when walking down the beach to a new location. Only happened twice to me, that I had to walk up closer to the treeline.

Anyway, the camera worked very well. Had a nice feel to it. I didn't end up using in camera HDR, as there were few clouds and the prime time was very short, so I didn't want to spend time playing with the menus to go out of auto bracket to HDR and then back again. Everything was shot in 5 exp auto bracket with 1 stop increments. ASA was set at 100 and aperture preferred at F8. Tripod protocol was sloppy, but seemed to work fine. Couldn't figure out the time exposure in the near dark, so just winged it with hand on the shutter button the whole time. I know, sloppy. Next time I'll either use the timer, or buy a corded remote. Snapbridge doesn't seem to allow continuous shots with a single button push.

Enough background, on to the HDR import. I picked two to start with, and will show the second, just because I like it better, and I think it shows the differences more clearly. I imported and merged the 5 files. I choose minimal deghosting as I liked the look of the water better. The software had no issue with the radically different water patterns. I previewed high deghosting and it looked like it picked the waves portion from one of the individual images and ran with it. I liked the softer look of the minimal. I edited the resultant merged image and saved it. I then picked the normal exposure single image and edited it.

Not a huge difference in the two. I do like the HDR version better. The first set I did made the HDR version much easier to edit than the single, but the results were very similar between the two. This set, not much difference in ease of editing.

Here the two are: First is the single image. Second is the HDR.

In all honesty, I prefer the first one. The colors of the golden sky are more saturated.

hark said:

In all honesty, I prefer the first one. The colors of the golden sky are more saturated.

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Something like this?



I was looking primarily at the shadow detail in the trees and the reflections in the sand. I sometimes get carried away with the color density of sunrises. At other times I overcompensate and leave them too bland.

Yeah, this 3rd option is the best. Remember you are looking at the full-res pic and we are seeing one that has been reduced. The dynamic range looks almost the same with the first 2 photos, so it was more a matter of were you going with a blue-hour photo of a tree or was it a sunrise photo with a tree as the foreground interest? Sunrise needs color, even if it is exaggerated with the saturation a bit. It also helps to shift the white balance off of auto towards the daylight preset.

But now in the third photo the color is in the sky, and we see warmth in the bare wood where the bark fell off of the tree. It's a better presentation of what is rightfully a sunrise image. And I like that small detail of including the moon, whether that was by design or not.

As BF Hammer mentioned, the reflection of light on the tree's bark is striking - so I really do like this edit. BUT what's going on with the moon now? It looks as though it is softened compared with the first edit. And one more thing ... maybe you can straighten your horizon a little bit. It's lower on the left just a tad. But the tree looks great, and the color in the sky sure is nice!

Clovishound said:

Something like this?

View attachment 371604

I was looking primarily at the shadow detail in the trees and the reflections in the sand. I sometimes get carried away with the color density of sunrises. At other times I overcompensate and leave them too bland.

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The moon in these shots is a nice touch.

There were several pictures that I actively moved to include the moon. I wish I could have used a longer focal length on some of those to enlarge the moon, but constraints of the width of the beach, and other trees encroaching in the frame usually excluded being able to do that. In this one the framing was pretty much set by including the two trees on the right and the moon was serendipitously included. I have shot this tree from several angles, and this is the angle that really works well. I like it even better when the tide is a little higher and only the top of the two tree's root balls on the right are visible over the water. This scene also looks great in B&W.

Needa said:

The moon in these shots is a nice touch.

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Actually, I called ahead and had them schedule the moon for this time frame.

I've used HDR quite extensively and find it useful in certain situations. I tend to use it most in shooting inanimate objects such as a train or heavy equipment. With these shots, it adds drama. Landscape shots not as much with moving water or leaves. HDR gives you leverage to create a wider vision of your image, if that's what you want. The great thing is when bracketing you can do both. I find myself using it less with the Z7, as the large file gives me more detail to work with.

It also depends on what you do with your images. I do shows and the public really likes HDR, it will sell 9 times out of 10 compared to single shot not tone mapped. The key is to add drama without overcooking it.

For HDR with waves or moving water, try stopping down (with low ISO and long shutter times) enough to lose the definition in the waves/moving water and don't use de-ghosting when you process for HDR.

Whiskeyman said:

For HDR with waves or moving water, try stopping down (with low ISO and long shutter times) enough to lose the definition in the waves/moving water and don't use de-ghosting when you process for HDR.

Click to expand...

I have found that the software doesn't really like processing (as in it refuses to merge them) the images with waves in it and high deghosting selected. Even with zero deghosting selected it appears to pick one image with the water and use that versus combining all five like it was a really long exposure.