The HDR Debate: From the perspective of a recovering addict.

Zillah

spooky donkey wrote: »

well im in favour of HDR as I do a lot of work with cars and metals.
But I do agree with Barry there, when I first discovered it, it was all I did.
I do try to do other things.
But HDR has its place....

here is a recent car pic I took that I felt needed HDR....


mustang castle by BarryKelly, on Flickr

I find the sky is really intrusive and fake-looking in this. There's also a lot of halo around the trees.

spooky donkey

yes but tell that to the guy who owns the car and has this pic haning on his garrage now. he loves it.

Any way I thought I would try add some fuel to this fire and try to the same pic with both HDR and non HDR. I will say I did not spend a lot of time on either pic, I rushed these out. Wonder how people compare these 2...
also not really a great pic to begin with but it was just a comparison expierment for myself.


tree bunch hdr by BarryKelly, on Flickr


tree bunch by BarryKelly, on Flickr

magicbastarder

the original looks processed there though?

GhostInTheRuins

Yeah the original looks way too processed. You could get the exact same "hdr" looking shot with the original one exposure.

CabanSail

I think this gets back to the realisation that Barry had with his Photography, that when the processing was taken away there wasn't enough left. If the whole attraction to an image is the HDR (or any other process) then it's probably going to wear thin very fast. To be successful the processing needs to compliment the image.

spooky donkey

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

Yeah the original looks way too processed. You could get the exact same "hdr" looking shot with the original one exposure.

I did try to do an apples to apples comparision with both photos but I felt the orignal needed more dodging than the HDR version. Also I may have over did the vingett a bitt on the orignal......
Orignal took me about 7 or 8 mins work the HDR was about 5 or 6 mins. I tried to keep them the same.

But still it was an intresting Expirment. I may try it again with one of my better HDR images I have done already...

DougL

Big thanks to the OP for a very interesting thread. The side-by-side comparisons really drive the point home for me!

It looks like I need to look at exposure blending! I'd always assumed that HDR and exposure blending were the same thing. It looks like exposure blending is a good option for when you just can't pull enough noise-free detail out of a RAW file.

ThOnda

AMEN! HDR is only technique, like BW conversion or colour tint.
I have also used HDR techniques (from the same RAW) to fill few details in bright areas, but nobody accused me of creating HDR pictures.
Just look around into books (not HDR for Dummies), exhibitions and good magazines with photos (National Geographic), how many overdone HDRs you'll see. Or how many pictures you think were done by use of HDR or tonemapping processes.
The picture should not scream "I have used this technique" or "I have used this LR preset".
Thanks a million for this thread.

sollisb

The answers are really in the questions;

Who do you process your shots for? Yourself? Others?

and;

Why do you publicly post your shots?

Normally, I take a shot knowing I'm going to HDR it. In fact I have never taken a shot and then manually HDR'd it later.

Some people like over-the-top HDR, some hate it. I post my shots to flickr. Why? Because hopefully, I learn from the comments I get and indeed, the comments I don't get. I don't use flickr to make me feel all happy inside. I expect people who comment to say what they think, they do like, they don't like. In that way, I as an amateur photographer can find out if I'm just crap at this or improving. I can see what is kind of shot is user friendly. I can get an idea of if I were to go pro would I succeed. (no to that one)

Photography at a basic level is either a hobby or a job. You're exceedingly lucky if you have a job that is also a hobby and gives you time to 'play' at that hobby.

If I critique someone else's photography, I tell them what I feel, what I like, what I don't like and most importantly why.. I think it's wrong, to generalise and say all HDR is bad, or you should never break the rule of thirds. Everything has it's place.

-B-

magicbastarder

sollisb wrote: »

If I critique someone else's photography, I tell them what I feel, what I like, what I don't like and most importantly why.. I think it's wrong, to generalise and say all HDR is bad, or you should never break the rule of thirds. Everything has it's place.

there's nothing wrong with saying 'all obvious HDR is bad' as it's just an opinion.
in the same way as i might say 'i hate reggae' (i don't, for the record); you might disagree, but there's no right or wrong about it.

FlipperThePriest

Great points. I would be partial to a bit of HDR myself lately. The same debate arises in music production among some technical aspects contributing to the music, the most comparable to HDR in photography would be dynamic range compression. High compression of music boosts or drops off different ranges of frequencies so that there is a very level amplitude of sound across the frequency spectrum. A lot of musicians' opinions is that it is drastically damaging to the piece of music but commercial producers nowadays feel it is important as this is how it is best received across radio airwaves and portible devices such as mobile phones and idocks and laptop speakers. Basically devolution in music playback has contributed to devolution in music production.

The new thing in music now is autotuning vocalists that can't even sing! It sounds terrible but everyone's doing it in the charts because they can. It will be overused until the next new thing comes along. In the 80's it was reverb. Everything was over reverberated because it was the done thing at the time.

I think when an improvement in technology causes more availability to the mass public (that was only available to an elite few previous) - people tend to binge on it.