This is something I have really been getting into recently! Its called HDR - High Dynamic Range. You can read up about it here on good ol' wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

If you can't be arsed to read that which I know you won't it is basically the art of taking a picture and having a larger dynamic range in colours ect on the picture so you get it all in the correct exposure ect.

But, while professionals use it to make things look 'perfect' and how the eye would see it, many people use it to get some really cool and funky effects - basically over processing the picture in a way. But some of the pictures can some out looking simply awesome!

The way that you do it, is by taking 3 pictures. One normal exposure, one over exposed (so its brighter) and one under exposed (so its darker). Then you load them into a program like Photomatrix Pro and let it do its magic. Then you can tweak all the settings in the picture to make it look how you want.

If anyone wants a proper step by step guide on how to do it - how I do it at least, let me know and I will make one!


Anyway, I first tried it the other day with my car quickly, got some poor results with a few pics, but two of the pictures came out ok.






So I thought, this is cool, I will try it some more! So while out with my two friends, I said I would try some HDR pictures of their cars to see how they came out.

This was the result.















Then I went urban exploring of an old disused industrial estate in a place called Tipner in Portsmouth. I have always wanted to go there because there are a couple of abandoned/decommissioned U.S. Army LARC-LX's down there, and there used to be a submarine there too.

I took quite a few pictures of the area, but this was one of the HDR pictures I took of the LARC-LX.






You'll see a lot more HDR stuff from me because I absolutely love it!

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I'm bringing this back because I spent the last three days waiting to post up my picture I did ageeees ago lol

i've really wanted to try again recently but haven't really remembered

I overdid it but I also didn't take the best picture for it. just was a trial

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How did you come up with your picture Chris? Give me your steps and i'll see where you went wrong

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lol it was just a tester, I washed it and took a picture it was rubbish there was no thought process. then I just fiddled with settings on the program.

it looks worse than I remember. I will do more soon.

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Doing it with 1 picture is always a bad start, you need at least 3

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No yeah I did use three

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Oh right. I take it you used photoshop?

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I don't remember, dad had a program on a trial I think.

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Oh ok lol. I tried photoshop, found it completely shit. Did some searching, found out most people use photomatrix pro, so gave it a go and works perfectly! It does help to have decent pictures to start with though, a lot of people dont realise that.

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I tried the 1 photo method quickly with a picture of your car Chris, mainly for experimental purposes. I just opened it in photoshop, saved it 3 times with, one with normal EV, one with +1 and one with -1... photomatrix has a hissy fit when it said it couldn't find the metadata, so I was like fuck off and entered the exposure values myself lol.

Its not perfect by any means, and with a few more adjustments it could look slightly better, but it came out ok really considering.


Normal vs hdr.

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Thats look pretty awesome though I am a big fan of these pictures they can look really good

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Yeah I love the way they look, just so much awesomeness about them.

Post that picture on ZSOC and take the credit for it lol

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I will once I have had a photoshoot in the week and i'll put it in with the rest on a show and shine thread

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I think these pics look brilliant, looking at the ground next to chris's car shows what a difference it makes.
I want my car like this lol.

Yeah it sure does make a difference! I love doing pictures like this now.

I've tried it with a few other things apart from cars ect, but nothing has turned out really good yet. Did some boats in a marina and some beach pics but I didn't like them. I am going to try household items soon to see how that goes.

I have got quite a bit of interest from a few people about HDR pictures of their car already funnily enough lol. If I do end up going to fitp which is more than likely, I will do some of the stand in HDR I think

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