Whats HDR??

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Name
danial
Edit My Images
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what is HDR??? havin never heard of this a basic and advanced explanation would be great.. thanks guys..
 
HDR = High Dynamic Range. You take a set of shots of different exposure settings, that expose for the highlights and the lowlights, then merge them together in processing, tone map them so that the image can be displayed and get detail showing in both. Very easy to go way overboard on the processing.

have a look at

http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/
 
Basically it is am photo with a High Dynamic Range. Which in reality means a photo that has detail in the highlights (normally sky) and 'low lights' (the shadows). Many ways to produce an HDR image, the most popular is to use software like Photomatix which lets you import a photo (or bracketed exposures of an image) and then 'tonemap' this into an 'acceptable' image. This tonemapping is needed as monitors (and printers) aren't able to show a large dynamic range.

http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/ - that explains it is a lot more detail
 
High Dynamic Range,

Basically, either film or sensors, have a limited dynamic range - the amount of detail that can be shown in both the highlights and the shadows. Usually if you bias exposure towards one end you lose detail at the other. HDR is a way of combining several images (usually 3 but you can use more) at different exposure settings, then combining those images in editing to produce a single image which has greater dynamic range than would otherwise be possible.

It can produce some stunning results done well. Carried too far it produces images with no appreciable highlights and too much shadow detail and it can look very unnatural - which is usually the biggest gripe of those who hate it.
 
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