Tag Archives: point & shoot

HDR for Real – Scenic Detail Gone Wild

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This is one of my first attempts at High Dynamic Range, multiple exposure photography. At the time, I considered it a training exercise in post processing, tone mapping with a 3 exposure HDR image with ev from -1 to +1.

Something about the final result seemed out of place. It had quite a bit of highly focused detail. Kind of like what you would get with an inexpensive point and shoot camera. You know, everything in focus, exposure balanced just right etc., without touching a single control except the shutter release.

To salvage the shot, I actually de-focused the entire image just a little and added some color punch with Nik HDR Efex Pro. Then I fixed some areas with Adobe Photoshop using the clone tool. To finish up, I toned it down a bit to eliminate some distracting contrast. I actually like this shot now.

So, what started as a training exercise with no hope for a completed image turned out to be a very satisfying experience for me.

Smartphone HDR Review #1

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Since HDR photography is now available on smart phones, I decided to do a few raw tests with a currently popular smartphone and post this brief review of the results. Being a long time photographer and current advocate of High Dynamic Range photography, the idea of being able to do point and shoot, camera phone HDR seemed like an interesting alternative. I used an iPhone 4s on my last outing to the market to test the process.

I’ve included a few examples of how the phone camera works in various lighting situations. The market uses very dramatic lighting to enhance the visual appearance of the produce and products. This proved to be a challenge for the iPhone. The shots below show the normal exposure on the left and the HDR image on the right. Absolutely NO post processing has been done to the images except for sizing in Photoshop.



As you can see above with the oranges and juice bottles, areas of lower contrast do fairly well. In this instance, store lighting was more subdued. But high contrast, as with the roses above isn’t handled very well. The Cranberries are pretty iffy. The HDR shot looks very bad in Photoshop but seems to present better here thought still pretty washed out.

The wine bottles below didn’t do very well at all. Notice the white labels where both images have overexposed areas that are made worse by the HDR process. And the brilliant colors ended up a little less brilliant.

Just about all of my shots turned out less than satisfactory. I realize that the iPhone camera is not intended to handle the extreme lighting situations that can be encountered. But, for a person wanting to add a little more realism to their photos, it does an adequate job. I’m sure that I will be taking advantage of smartphone cameras in the future when cameras, lenses, tripods, etc., are not available.

With the current technology, some really great photographs are being produced with smartphone cameras. I will be presenting another example of Smartphone HDR using the 5mp camera in a Windows Phone 7, Dynamic Range (DR) mode. I Know, it’s not called HDR but the results are very similar.

So, wanting to see how the phone camera result would work with tone mapping in HDR Efex Pro, I produced this image from the HDR example above. I also used Adobe Photoshop to balance the Hue/Saturation for more realistic colors and Shadow/Highlight adjustments to, well, fix the shadows and highlights. All of the necessary tonal elements are present. The image just needed more post-processing.

The Capitol – Realistic pseudo-HDR

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OK, here goes.

It was a cold dreary day in Washington DC with the wind ripping through my light jacket causing an unending shiver through my whole body. The dark, tenebrous clouds were rolling across the sky displaying the intense power of the raw storm as it approached the governmental metropolis.

Governmental metropolis? I couldn’t think of a more appropriate description.

This shot is part of a larger image that contained lots of distracting ‘junk’.  I cropped from the right and bottom to isolate the Capitol and exaggerate the intensity of the cloud cover that day. The photo was loaded into Efex Pro for tone mapping where I used the #9 Vibrant Textures preset to get more depth in the sky. I also set the HDR method for Natural at 20%.

After loading into Photoshop, the following changes were applied to the image.

  • Image was cropped to eliminate distractions.
  • Image>Rotate Canvas>Arbitrary. I had to use an angle of .75 CCW to straighten the top of the Capitol.
  • Isolated the sky area and applied surface blur: Filter>Blur>Surface Blur with Radius at 5 pixels and Threshold at 15 levels to get rid the rough, grainy look.
  • Applied Image>Adjustments>Curves on the sky area to soften and blend the tones.
  • Applied Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlights to eliminate a little of the blue and cyan in the clouds.

The final image is very close to the real scene with just enough pseudo-HDR effect to make it more interesting. Sometimes a simple point & shoot digital camera can produce great results.

Korean War Veterans Memorial

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Korean War Veterans Memorial

My first visit to Washington DC was for Thanksgiving last year (2010).  The Korean War Veterans Memorial is in West Potomac Park, southeast of the Lincoln Memorial.  I found the memorial to be incredibly magnetic. The day was cloudy which provided very little contrast.  I was traveling light and only had a Fujifilm Finepix J38 point & shoot 12.2 megapixel camera with me.

My original shot was filled with background distractions and more color than I wanted for the final image.  I used the #20 Vibrant Scenery preset in Efex Pro to correct the color balance and add an interesting texture for a realistic HDR effect. I worked with Curves in Adobe Photoshop to get a more dynamic contrast and also used the Clone tool to eliminate the background distractions. Finally, I used Hue/Saturation to adjust the colors to portray an environment that seems to go along with the facial expressions of the figures.

If you make the trip to the Mall in Washington, don’t miss this great photo opportunity.