HDR Photography Photo Workshop

Chapter 1. DYNAMIC RANGE AND DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

DYNAMIC RANGE

WRANGLING WITH EXPOSURE

SINGLE-EXPOSURE LIMITATIONS

TRADITIONAL SOLUTIONS

THE HDR ANSWER

Although digital photography is a compelling and satisfying endeavor, there are significant limitations to the technology. You don't often hear of them as such, hut they affect you every time you press the Shutter button. The most serious of these limitations, as it relates to High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, is dynamic range.

The simple truth of the matter is that digital cameras are unable to fully capture what you see with your eyes much of the time. The world is a deeply complex subject whose own dynamic range from dark to light far and away exceeds the digital camera's ability to record it. To make matters worse, you often limit yourself to an averaged or compromised exposure when you rely on a single photograph and normal processing techniques to capture and present everything. This chapter prepares you for the wealth of HDR information and techniques presented later in the book by illustrating the problems inherent in digital photography today. You learn about dynamic range, exposure, metering, and see examples of how photographs are typically compromised by limited dynamic range. You briefly see several traditional solutions to these problems so you can compare their effectiveness to HDR.

DYNAMIC RANGE

Within the context of photography, dynamic range is the range of light, from little to much, that can be measured and recorded, ...