High dynamic range or HDR photography is a new photography technique. It is the act of taking a series of bracketed photos and than merging those together in a way that expands the dynamic range of a photograph.
Sounds confusing? Well it’s not as bad as it sounds.
To understand HDR you must first understand dynamic range. Every scene you photograph has shadows and highlights. The shadows are the dark areas of the photo and the highlights are the bright areas of the photo. Everything that falls between the highlights and the shadows are called mid-tones. The range between the darkest shadow and the brightest highlight is what makes up your total dynamic range.
Now if you remember HDR stands for high dynamic range. It is called that because this technique allows you to capture a larger dynamic range than what you could with traditional photography. This is because most scenes today have a dynamic range that exceeds the limits of a traditional camera sensor. Cameras will generally only expose for a portion of an image based on your shutter speed and aperture. The rest of the photo will then be over exposed or under exposed. How do you solve this issue? We solve it using HDR.
HDR uses a series of bracketed shots to collect data about the scene photographed. It then uses this information to merge all the best portions of each image into a single photograph. This photograph will be a 32 bit HDR file. Most monitors can not display this type of file and most printers can not print this type of file correctly. There is simply too much information in the single file. In order to solve this youcan use tone mapping software.
Tone mapping software basically reconfigures the data so that it can be displayed and printed correctly. However, the data can be reconfigured in many different ways, depending on the settings you use in your preferred tone mapping software. This allows photographers to get really creative with HDR. You can create some very interesting effects that look surreal or you can maintain a very realistic look to your photograph. Many photographers who use the HDR techniques enjoy the tone mapping portion of HDR the most.
