I am happy. Wedding season begins again for me on Saturday. When I was preparing the new wedding report and thought about the many wonderful hours with newlyweds last year, I realized that I hadn't even told you yet my favourite picture from 2012.
It was an overcast day in September when we saw this Couple shoot in Planten un Bloemen had ended and suddenly the sun made its way through the clouds one last time before it finally disappeared for the day. I took a quick look at the cloud formation and immediately realized that I didn't have much time to take a picture. So I asked my bride and groom to stand on the lawn for a moment. The lighting situation was beautiful, but also extremely difficult to capture photographically. Fortunately, I have no qualms about using methods that are unworthy of a real so-called photo professional: I took several pictures with different exposure times in order to put them together later on the computer. Yes, you read that right: I took an HDR photo.
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and this technology offers the possibility of a large exposure range to depict. The camera has the disadvantage compared to the human eye that it cannot reproduce strong contrasts. That's why sunny days are great for people, but rather horrible for photographers. Getting structure in photos in sunshine in bright clouds and in dark shadows is an almost insurmountable challenge for any camera. HDR recordings can get this problem under control, but are frowned upon because the power of the controls in corresponding programs often leads to uncontrolled use and a completely surreal depiction of reality.
With HDR recordings, images with different exposure times are superimposed using special programs and the respective areas are optimally merged, i.e. the dark areas come from the images with the longer exposure time and the bright areas from the short-exposed images. The Nikon D800 has one at low ISO numbers fantastic dynamic range, but this camera can't do magic either.
I use this to combine the different exposure levels Nik software HDR Efex Pro and have had good experiences with it. Especially because I rarely shoot HDRs from a tripod and HDR Efex Pro is pretty good at eliminating the ghost images that result from slight camera movement.
The image was photographed with the Nikon D800e and the 14-24mm f/2.8 at 15mm, ISO100. It is composed of 5 exposures, whereby the D800 only allows bracketing (BKT) in one aperture stop. So I take 7 shots and leave out the middle images.
So I think it's great! HDR or not! 😉
Great – me too 🙂
I think it's great too! There's nothing wrong with HDR as long as it doesn't stand out and, above all, doesn't look like it was developed in a factory. 😉
I'm glad you agree with me 🙂
Oh, sometimes I accept a second opinion in addition to my own... 😀
This is what sets you apart...
I have developed quite a dislike for HDRs. Most of it just looks completely awful.
Yes, there are exceptions. In some images you can't see it and in others it just works. In my opinion, a nice alternative is to create a 32-bit Tiff and then develop it like a RAW file. The look is also somehow "different", but not as "painterly" as with most HDRs.
I can't stand HDR - at least most photos of this kind. I'll make an exception for you 😉 The die-hard "user" of the various digital kindergartens, er, forums would have "conjured up" a sky and candy colors in this (your) photo that would make your eyes water. That's not the case with your photo and that's the difference between HDR and HDR...
Ralf
And because I know that HDR is so disreputable, I wanted to remind you again that it is a viable option. You can overdo anything, but you don't have to. 😉
... if the man took out that nasty tobacco filter from the clouds, no one would even notice without an announcement; that's HDR fluff 😉
I've been waiting for a long time for someone to complain about this and was counting on you 😉
... there has to be some constant in life 😉
A nice good morning to HH 🙂