HDR for Skydiving photography

[ast4711 0]

Hi there,
did anybody try HDR (high dynamic range) techniques in skydiving photography?
I read about and will try it on the next occassion, but from what I know yet the ammount of motion during the time required to take 3 shots might be to much....

Any experiences?

alex

--
www.tandemmaster.net
www.skydivegear.de

[dragon2 2]

You can't take HDR shots the usual way (the right way), you want to take as many shots as you can of the same, stationary, object (3 is not enough). But you could try it the "cheap" way: take one shot in RAW then export that RAW with varying exposures, as many as you can, and merge those. Not as good as the real thing but all we can get in skydiving

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[Laszloimage 0]

Yes, that's what I do when I need it. I convert my RAW's with various exposure level and then apply HDR.
It works pretty good for me most of the time.
But I know lot of the softwares out there don't even have the capability for HDR. I use ULEAD's Photoimpact 10 (less than $100!!!) which has the HDR feature, I would say this application just as good and powerfull as PS CS.
-Laszlo-

[ast4711 0]

Lazlo, Dragon,

have you tried that with PS-CS2? it complains that the dynamic range is not large enough to create a usable HDR image... saved 7 Version with exposure from -3 to +3 in CameraRAW before.

alex

--
www.tandemmaster.net
www.skydivegear.de

[Laszloimage 0]

I don't have PS CS, I only have a lighteher version which doesn't have HDR. So I don't have any experince using it on PS.
As I said I use the HDR feature on my Photoimpact-10 by ULEAD.
-Laszlo-

[ast4711 0]

I just played around a little and found Photomatix Pro (www.hdrsoft.com) useful. There is a free Demo available...

alex

--
www.tandemmaster.net
www.skydivegear.de

[dorbie 0]

Your best option might be to underexpose and shoot raw with low ISO & see what you can recover in the shadows. With a good DSLR you'll get acceptable results.

You may not be able to close the aperture all the way down but that's for experimentation. You don't have to be in the air to do a little experiment.

I remembered reading this a few years ago, and was able to find it again, see the section on dynamic range at the bottom of this page:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/1ds/1ds-field-4.shtml

Do you really need additional HDR tricks when you're recovering this much detail in the shadows?