Comments on: High Dynamic Range (HDR) – A Fad or a Growing Trend?

By: MCSE

MCSE — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:40:38 +0000

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By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:54:37 +0000

“True” HDR was actually invented in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The early colour photographs of Russia have vastly superior dynamic range than Kodacolor-style cameras. Critics are either ignorant of the history of photography or jealous that their ultra-expensive LDR cameras aren’t capable of matching the quality of turn-of-the-20th-century photographs.

And can something that has lasted over twice as long as the entire history of LDR colour photography be considered a “fad”?

To produce cheap HDR, all you need is a black-and-white CCD device capable of more than 8 bits per pixel, a pinwheel with multiple monochrome filters (one for each colour plane) and a really good shutter. In short, a high-speed version of the original 1890s colour photographic system.

(Cheap, but not very practical. It would be almost impossible to hold your hands still enough to use, the mechanical components would be prone to failure, and it would be next-to-impossible to capture a moving image of any speed.)

Practical HDR tends to use 3CCD, but you need very good optics for the image to be any good and optics are expensive. To get the prisms and lenses to be flawless enough to be any good is not cheap.

However, most of that is moot, as virtually nobody uses JPEG2000 or OpenEXR (the only compressed image formats capable of supporting 32bpp HDR) and nobody can afford the memory requirements of a RAW image at 32bpp or 48bpp. Oh, an no compressed image format exists at all for 48bpp. Nor are there any HDR monitors capable of displaying them.

If you can’t view, share or print the photographs, then whether the camera can actually take them is immaterial. What’s the good of an image you can’t use?

(Ok, there’s one exception. If you’re an archaeologist or an astronomer, you may well want to take a full 48bpp HDR photo but only display a fragment of the dynamic range at a time. Not much of a market, admittedly, but it exists.)

By: Daniel

Daniel — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:29:30 +0000

Always good quality info from this site!

By: Christiaan

Christiaan — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:45:14 +0000

Thanks for linking to my HDR from 1jpg tutorial!

Very nice complete post with all those links!

I am of the opinion that HDR will be ONE of the ways to make photos in the future. It is very likely that cameras will have a HDR setting, or that all compact cameras will eventually ONLY be able to make HDR photos, where everything is automatically exposed correctly. Professional photographers may still want to use non HDR cameras as they want to capture silhouettes or overexposed areas/images. At the moment making a good HDR still depends a lot on skill and experience in photo editing, but in the future I believe that wont be neccesary anymore.

By: good quality

good quality — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:18:48 +0000

does this strategy work?

By: Brukhar

Brukhar — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:36:50 +0000

That’s an interesting take, but it also depends on people not overdoing it. Certainly HDR can make photographs even more spectacular, but it sometimes feels like photographers are compensating for a poor initial shot by shooting in HDR. That’s just my opinion though, so what do you think?

By: Moschos

Moschos — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:34:00 +0000

Hi world! In my nobble opinion i think HDR is a new technique to take photos, it’s like the “future” in photography. If you do not overload HDR-strength and use wisely the controls you can create a unique photo much realistic than the same one frame photo. It is not a fad, its the future of capturing and displaying the light