5.1 How to shoot HDRI
HDRI
If you don’t know what HDRI is, read the post High Dynamic Range Imagery first.
HDR photos can be any subject matter, not just a chrome ball; the ball assists in showing the extremes in the shadows and highlights.
This is a High Dynamic Range Image – well, sort of. What you see to the left is a compressed version of the final HDRI product, created from the pictures taken below at different F-stops.
The process is fairly simple:
Set Normal exposure
Take a photo +/- 1 stops above/below normal
Take a photo +/- 2 stops above/below normal
Take a photo +/- 3 stops above/below normal
Take a photo +/- 4 stops above/below normal
To set your normal exposure, choose an F-stop in the middle of your lens/camera's range.* Compensate for the lighting situation by adjusting the ISO and shutter speed/angle. When the image looks good, only change the F-stop to capture different exposures!
You captured your first set of HDR photos, now what?
Photoshop:
File > Automate > Merge to HDR Pro
Browse and select photos
Click ‘OK’ and wait for the next window to pop up
Manually select your ‘normal’ exposure OR
Select the photo to set as the normal exposure with the arrows
HDR Pro
Change to 32-bit
Click ‘Tone in ACR’ (Adobe Camera Raw)
Make any adjustments as needed
Save as
Uncompressed
.tiff or .psd
Web
.jpg or .png
Post Production
.exr, .hdri, .hdr or, .rad (radiance) file
Photo Sets
You can download these on the previous post along with the finalized .hdr file. These photo sets are shown to give an idea of what an hdri set should look like.
