Barber Shop and HDR Workflow

I was basically out with tripod doing HDR all day. I took 900 shots. (Remember, each shot is bracketed twice so it’s really 300 shots). But got quite a bit of interesting things. Detail is amazing. There’s a tiny sign in the window, you can’t even see the sign, that says, In Business Since 1958. And you can read every Protected by So and So Sticker.

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HDR Software: Photomatix from http://www.hdrsoft.com/

General HDR workflow.  Some of the camera technique is specific to the Canon DSLRs

1) Bracket 3 at a time with mirror locked up (almost always on tripod)

Depending on the contrast, bracketing ranges from 1/3rd of a stop to 1.5 stops in both directions.  AEB is built in.  Generally working with Live View on.  Turn AEB on and set the over- and under- exposures.

2) Mirror lock up.

3. Manual focusing.  You are after all on a tripod, or something sturdy like the lip of a garbage pail.  You can use the arrow keys to move a box in the center to tell camera where to do it’s reading from.

5. Make sure you have lens set to manual; and that when you go back to regular shooting you flip it on again.

Another way of focusing, which is faster but I don’t think as accurate – is to simply focus through the viewfinder as usual, and while it’s focused, turn off the auto focus on the lens.

6. Use cable release.  Hold it down while camera fires off three shots.  Or if you are doing something where movement is involved, you can click one picture at a time.

6.1 Not a big fan of rules, but I would say, you’d want to work in aperture priority mode so that the depth of field remains the same for the three shots.

7. If using Lightroom, import the RAW files and make sure you aren’t using any development stuff that you shouldn’t.  For example, I have sharpening turned off.  I want to start with as pure a file as possible for the next step.  I tend to zero everything out.

8.  There’s a plugin for Lightroom.  Actually, at this point, there are a number of ways to proceed.

However I’m doing this, I don’t touch the original RAW files.  They will end up exported into a folder below the one holding the originals as Tiff files.

As I say – I don’t want to go into all the paths that are possible here, but the main choice is whether you go to HDR or Fused Images.

Again. Depends on the image and what you see in your mind’s eye.

At some point, you end up with a composite file, which will go into Tonemapping.

Tonemapping is the heart of the process.  Even here, there are two ways of going about it.  One is a compressor model that doesn’t have many options.  The other is the Detailed Compression model which has tons of sliders.  Again – depends on what suits your needs.

Eventually you end up with a one-layered tiff file that looks something like this: img_777_8_9_tonemapped.tif or img_777_8_9_averaged_tonemapped.tif

and these files are in the HDR folder beneath the folder that holds the originals.  All of this takes longer to explain than to do, since it is done with various presets that know where to place the files.

Now, you have an unsharpened, color file.  Which takes you to part two of the workflow.  You begin with the tonemapped color, unsharpened file and it goes into Lightroom, or Nik, or Photoshop, or whatever the heck you use to process the file.  So you do your various tricks until you’re happy with it (which may only last a few minutes) and then exported for the blog, the store, and as needed, the tonemapped file which is never destroyed, (either you are adding layers, or you are printing through a non-destructive program like Lightroom, or NIK filters.  The point being, that you can always go back to the tonemapped file and start again with the conversions for black and white, or for printing etc.

I know that didn’t answer everything.  But off the top of my head that’s the general flow.

But no matter what you do, you always have your original RAW files, and at least one copy of them.  I usually have two copies.

Misc. Notes: You can use tonemapping even if you only have one shot.  Either just work on that one shot, or make a virtual copy in some raw converter that has some of the corrections you want and then fuse them.

Photomatix can read the Canon Raw files I’ve been using, which range from the original digital Rebel to the 5D to the 450D and 500D.  It isn’t necessary to use a separate converter, but as I’ve been trying to say, there are a lot of ways of skinning this cat.  A lot depends on what RAW converter you use, and whether you need to pull extra headroom from the RAW file.  Another consideration is whether you are using several files or one file.  With one file, you may want to run it through your favorite RAW converter first where you can coax out those extra pixels; and then put it into Photomatix.

However, if you are have a bunch of bracketed files, it may be simpler to feed them directly to Photomatix.  There are subtle differences between these methods.

Furthermore, Photomatix has a mode called BATCH MODE.  My previous machine used to run out of memory in Photomatix if I tried to process more than four files at once, so Photomatix has the batch file process exactly for this purpose, or if you just want to batch process a lot of files.  With my current new Mac, I haven’t run into memory issues with Photomatix.  It’s just nice to know that it’s there if you need it.

If you are shooting something that has strong lines, and nothing is moving (other than your camera) it is possible to hand hold three shots and fuse them.  But you are always better off with a tripod.  Oh, and when you do use mirror lockup – put your hand over the viewfinder to prevent stray light from bouncing through and throwing off the metering.  This is a standard thing to do with mirror lockup, and in fact Canon puts a little plastic thingy on the strap that will fit in the viewfinder for this purpose, but I find it a pain to use.