0EV single exposure
I should have labeled this post, “Seeing how sausage is made…..” 🙂
This morning I’ve been working on my latest round of images from yesterday’s trip to the Sunset Crater National Monument. Lots of photos to sort, experimentation with HDR, and realizing I’ve never shared what a little change will do for you.
First lets take a look at the 0EV exposure of a picture I shot while at Sunset Crater playing in the lava fields…..
This photo was taken at 12:30 p.m. High sun, things getting washed out. No filter, no edits. This is as shot. Shot at 1/1000th of a second at F6.3, ISO 200, and focal length of 10mm with my Canon 40D.
With a little editing I could go somewhere with this shot. Check the white balance, work on the clarity slightly, push up the vibrancy just a bit and we’d probably all be pretty happy with the photo.
Now, what goes on when you take 3 exposures, 0EV / -2EV / +2EV? And what happens when you slightly adjust settings in Photomatix? Let’s take a look.
Bright Outdoor HDR saved preset I created
The first HDR presented here was setup with my “Bright Outdoor” setting. I save settings in Photomatix that I like that work for certain types of images. Depending on what you’re shooting and what you want to display you’ll end up saving settings or toying with Photomatix constantly. I prefer saving settings. Here’s the settings that went into this one.
- Strength: 100
- Color Saturation: 100
- Luminosity: 0
- Light Smoothing: Medium
- Micro Contrast: 10
- White Point: 1.5
- Black point: .5
- Gamma: 1
- The remaining settings in Color and Smoothing settings remained at defaults.
There it is. Interesting image, pretty poppy colors. Not truly representative of how I remember the scene. The dirt is too bright, remember, cinder fields? Yeah, this is way to bright and poppy. Maybe this setting would be great for things on Route 66, but not so great in my mind for things in dark cinder fields.
Heavier Photomatix setting
So, what’s the next setting I messed with? I called it Heavy when I saved it. Not really heavy at all. Just a slight alteration to be honest……
- Strength: 100
- Color Saturation: 65
- Luminosity: 0
- Light Smoothing: High
- Micro Contrast: 10
- White Point: 1.5
- Black point: 1.5
- Gamma: 1
- The remaining settings in Color and Smoothing settings remained at defaults.
What changed? Dropped the Color Saturation and increased the black point. For me this works better. The sky was a heavier blue, not a bright super lit one like the first HDR. The dirt here is a little darker. It looks closer to what I remember. The log wasn’t super bright like the first HDR. It’s old and weathered.
See, slight adjusments when doing HDRs leads to dramatic changes. What style is right? None. This is to your taste. It’s up to you and it’s about what you want to present to viewers.
If you’re using Photomatix I’d suggest one thing. Don’t forget to try different setups and styles. Save presets that you find interesting and label them clearly so you have an idea of what you’re getting. Don’t make lables like “Heavy”, that didn’t really help me figure out what the setting did. 🙂