Korean Photography Blog

If you are a fan of “dynamic” Korea and its sparkling-ness then you probably want to make your photos that really pop and this is where HDR comes in. Now I know that there are a lot of arguments surrounding the issue of using HDR and some die-hard photographers out there really hate it, but they also said that when DSLR’s and photoshop first came out. Whatever your position is on it, I don’t really care because for many situations, I find that HDR just looks awesome. Especially in Korea, when there is an acid trip like setting to some downtown areas and a stimulus overload of signs and colours that would get washed out if you are not careful. HDR can help make those colours and details pop.

The question I get asked most is “wow how did you do it? You must have used photoshop” Well yes and no. If you have no idea what HDR is, it is basically fusing 3 shots of the same scene that are exposed at different settings into 1 “dynamic” shot. This is supposed to be a closer version of what the eye actually sees because it uses a broader spectrum. That being said I am going to give you a quicker overview of my workflow and get you started taking some HDR shots.

First, is what to shoot. Sounds strange I know, but I find that there are some limitations to HDR, that maybe the pros can handle but I don’t think that a beginner could. So be aware that you are going to be taking 3 shots of EXACTLY the same scene. So crowds, moving cars, traffic, trees blowing in the wind, etc are not your best subjects. This is because of the fact that when you put the pics together, whatever program you use will try and match up all of the features and if it can’t, you get what is called “Ghosting” and that is when you get a partial imprint of something on the final image.

So the things that are great to shoot are skies! Dynamic skies are awesome in HDR! If you wait until a storm breaks at sunset and you can catch the light piercing through the clouds, shoot it. Buildings, reflections, urban areas, are all great to shoot. You want to look for a scene and enhance the colours and contrast.

Ok, so now how do you do it? Before you even think about hitting that button, put your camera on a tripod. This is a must, there can be no shaky-shaky when you are getting these shots. Next, set you cameras AEB settings (Auto Exposure Bracketing). For older canons like mine (30D) you can find this setting in the menu screen in the red section. For newer canons, you have to hold the “mode” and “AF drive” buttons to turn of the AEB. Nikons, I am not so sure about, but according to Scott Kelby, you can adjust the AEB by pressing and holding the Function button (fn) and then using the command dial to find the AEB mode. He also recommends using 5 shots for HDR. This can be adjusted for canons by using the custom functions panel. For older models like mine, you have to get the extra two manually. I usually set mine two stops above and under, so basically: -2, 0, +2. For the 5 shot guys got with one -2, -1, 0, +1, +2.

So now that your camera is on a tripod, you have it set up to shoot bracketed shots, what do you do next? Well, I always shoot my shots in Aperture Priority. I just get better results from shooting in this mode. Next you would want to plug in your shutter release, if you have one. If you don’t try using this technique if you have a canon: Switch the drive to timer. For some reason (which is totally cool) in timer mode it will fire all of your bracketed shots for you. So that means either 3 or 5, it will just keep shooting until it is done without having you touch the camera. If you have the shutter release, I usually switch the mode to high speed burst and fire away.

Now you have your shots, you are back at home with cup of coffee in hand and and the images in front of you. What to do now? One of the best programs out there for HDR is “Photomatix Pro” There are others, but this is the one that I would highly recommend. So, if you have that, fire it up. Next, hit the “Generate HDR” button and load your images. Photomatix does a pretty good job of knowing what photos should be used, so it will let you know if you got a different image in the mix or not, but it is always good to double check. Once the images are loaded, you get a dialogue box with some options. I usually turn on; “align source images” “Reduce Noise” and (if you think there was some movement) “Attempt to reduce ghosting artifacts” Then hit the “Generate HDR button and wait a bit for the process to finish.

Now, you have a photo that looks like crap.

Hit the “Tone Mapping” button and work away. The sliders that I usually use are Strength, Saturation, Tone Settings: White Point and Black Point. Typically you want to jack the strength way up to 100% and keep the saturation around 60 for decent results. Next I usually play around with the white points and black points until I get something that I like. Then I save it. I normally keep all of my tone mapped but unprocessed HDRs in one file. I do this so that I can come back to the original HDR and rework it without having to reprocess the entire image set or look through a bunch of files for that one HDR shot. If processed it, it will be in the HDR file.

Now, load it into Photoshop and make your adjustments. Usually I would process this the same way that I would normally process an image, but there are some differences. One of the key problems with HDR is that there sometimes can be a lot of noise in your shots. So here is where you can use noise ninja or noiseware and remove that stuff. You can also mask out the areas that you want to remain sharp because sometimes these programs also reduce the sharpness of the shot in order to reduce the noise. For sharpening I find that “smart sharpen” works really well for these images.

Anything beyond these basic steps are for the advanced photographers. If you are one of those guys, then there is a much better, more clearly explained Tutorial series by the most amazing HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff at Stuck in Customs.com Click the link and it will take you to his great tutorial that makes mine looks like that un-tone-mapped image.

Another great resource is Scott Kelby’s video tutorial on creating HDR photos. This is the companion guide to his great series called The digital photography book and you can check out the video here Just scroll down to chapter 5.

That is about it. I hope that this will get you at least start in HDR. Let me know how it goes.