HDR in camera photography help

[BADGER.BRAD]

Having recently brought a Sony A6000 ( my first real digital camera) I am keen to learn all it's features and how they can be used. In the past my digital photography has been limited to cheap point and press cameras and one of the real bug bares over film was the lack of dynamic range and the amount of photos that at first were ruined and latter I realized were not worth taking, one of the questions I have is when using in camera HDR will it still be possible to blow out the highlights or should the HDR process reduce the likelihood of this ? I haven't had much time to play with the camera so haven't up to this point had time to test this out and am keen to try to get things right in camera not being keen on sitting in front of a PC.

Thanks all

 

[john.margetts]

In-camera HDR on my Canon 650D and 80D works well. It is not as good as manual HDR as you have very little control but is worth doing in challenging situations. You can still blow-out the highlights if the dynamic range is great. I find this happens in mediaeval churches a lot.

 

[BADGER.BRAD]

Thanks John I have had a real problem in churches with the point and presses making the shots unusable, maybe that would be a good place to practice !

 

[RichardC27]

I haven't had much time to play with the camera so haven't up to this point had time to test this out and am keen to try to get things right in camera not being keen on sitting in front of a PC.

Thanks all

You have to process your digital images on a PC to get the best out of them. It is exactly the same as processing a negative in a darkroom. I can't imagine any in camera HDR will be as good as bracketing your exposure using several raw files and the processing them in PS to get a true HDR image. Digital cameras work in an opposite way to film in that it is usually best to under-expose by 2/3rds of a stop and then bring the exposure back up in post processing. This ensures any clipped highlights are kept to a minimum, as most digital sensors handle shadow recovery better than highlight recovery

 

[Phil S]

one of the questions I have is when using in camera HDR will it still be possible to blow out the highlights or should the HDR process reduce the likelihood of this ? I haven't had much time to play with the camera so haven't up to this point had time to test this out and am keen to try to get things right in camera not being keen on sitting in front of a PC.

The A6000 will do a pretty good job of bracketing but it won't necessarily stop the blown highlights and in my experience (using a Sony A6500) you can get a better result from a single RAW image exposed to prevent blown highlights with recovery of shadows on processing. In the end, as RichardC27 says, you need to embrace the software processing side of digital photography, take some RAW images and use software for any HDR - it will be worth it!