HDR a New Tool for Old Photographs - Memphis Photographer Blair Ball

HDR has had an interesting impact in the world of photography, and gaining in popularity daily. HDR has allowed us as photographers to go back to some old film negatives or slides and be able to save them and make some outstanding pictures. Today, in the digital world, photographers are taking 3-9 images of the same subject, and combining them with HDR software. To create HDR images:

Use a tripod.
Use a cable release.
Set your aperture to the same for each image.
Most DSLR cameras allow for 3-9 images to be taken automatically with a 1/3, 1/2, or 1 full stop. This maximizes the range of light for the images.
You can even do HDR with single images. The one shot below was just a single image.

There are several HDR software packages available:

What is HDR? It stands for High Dynamic Range, is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wide dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.

The two main sources of HDR imagery are computer renderings and merging of multiple photographs, the latter of which in turn are individually referred to as low-dynamic-range (LDR) or standard-dynamic-range (SDR) photographs.

Tone-mapping techniques, which reduce overall contrast to facilitate display of HDR images on devices with lower dynamic range, can be applied to produce images with preserved or exaggerated local contrast for artistic effect.

Consider the Dynamic Range of the following: