You’ll see the term HDR thrown around a lot when viewing various photography sites. Even we throw it in a few of our marketing e-mails and on our website, so we thought it best to offer an explanation of what HDR is and how it can be used to produce a superior looking tour.
High Dynamic Range – A fancy name for photos that look good!
OK, so lets use an example. You’re in a large room with large floor to ceiling windows looking out onto a great balcony. Inside it’s fairly light, but there is also a lot of light streaming through the windows. You take out your camera, and take a shot. Chances are you’ll get one of two things happen. 1; you have a shot in which the windows are completely blown out with a white haze, but the inside looks OK, or 2; a shot in which the outside is clearly visible but inside the room is dark.
This happens because unlike your eyes, a camera cannot distinguish between extreme light and dark, and has to just deal with one at a time. Most photographers will just find a happy medium and adjust the ISO, Exposure and aperture settings to deal with light the best he can.
HDR is a great way of dealing with this, giving great results. It involves taking a number of shots of the same scene, but in varying exposures. This will give you a range of shots, each one giving you a different exposure and showing the varying degrees of light in the room and outside. These shots can then be merged together into a single photo giving you an end result that shows the highlights in the room as well as showing whats outside.
The above example is a very simplified version of what can be achieved.
A great example of how we have used the HDR technique is the King’s Fund London tour, take a look here.
