My First HDR Picture

HDR? I had no idea what this word mean. What I knew was it relates to surrealistic looking pictures. I visited a group in flickr named "HDR". Then it led me to dig HDR further and made me realize that I needed a software assisstant to generate HDR pictures. Professor Google told me some available freeware, and I chosed Picturenaut.

After some trial-and-error sessions (tripod or handheld? static or dynamic object?) finally I got my first decent HDR pictures, no ghosting. I used a Nikon D90, Nikkor 35mm/1:1.8G lens, ML-3 remote shutter, Aperture Priority mode f/5.6, ISO-200, bracketing +/- 2 stops and put the camera on a chair. This is the result:

Exposure time 1/6 sec (-2.0)

Exposure time 0.62 sec (0.0)

Exposure time 2.5 sec (+2.0)

The result

I didn't do any processing on these pictures but HDR processing by Picturenaut. No curve, no brightness, no white balance nor other adjustment. Sure, this picture is not in the same league with pictures in this link. But this has made me so excited...... I didn't pay attention on composition, color balance at all. I just wanted to get one decent HDR picture first.

Next stop: try to get better HDR pictures, composition, framing, color, exposure....... or maybe better software?

By the way, thanks to my 9-years old son for holding his breath for these pictures. Any comment would be highly appreciated.

Note: I still have another HDR picture in my Photoblog page, here.