Can someone please explain to me what the deal is with HDR photos (like this or this). Are they supposed to look like crap, or am I just missing my magic goggles? I must be missing out somehow, as I can’t quite figure out why people are molesting their photos so.
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This is Binary Bonsai, the online journal of Michael Heilemann — a Danish expat Interface Director at Squarespace, ex-Computer Game Developer and Film Lover — coming to you out of New York. It contains thoughts on games, interface design, movies, books, science fiction, Star Wars and various other subjects as befits the author, who is available for comment on Twitter.
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Most HDR looks like crap in my eyes. Only a few people can get somewhat reasonable photos out of it, one being this guy;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eecue/tags/hdr/
Personally I prefer people taking the time to use graduated ND filters instead.
I think a lot of people abuse the capabilities of the HDR process.
The basic premise is the get the entire spectrum of light into a single photo by using multiple exposures.
check out a few that i did when i was in Washington DC:
http://flickr.com/photos/markrickert/291476708/
http://flickr.com/photos/markrickert/291476657/
http://flickr.com/photos/markrickert/291476689/
I’m with you mang, HDR looks fucking shit-house!
It’s still kind of new, so people are working out how to best put it to use. There are some terribly beautiful ones. For my money, I love this one.
But, some people certainly know how to make a mess of them. The second one you linked to Michael was scary.
HDR is a bit like the ‘wet floor’ effect.
When used in the right place at the right time it looks great. When it is over used or completely abused it just grates.
To be honest I do like most HDR images and I do understand the idea behind the magic but like Mark pointed out a lot of the time people end up tweeking the tone maps so much that it ends up looking like it belongs on a PS3 not a photo gallery.
However I am currently trying out Photomatic to see how much the slider moves towards magic and away from skill
I can’t stand that style ether. I think HDR photos can be really cool but you have to use high smoothing on your tone mapping. Low smoothing give you that grayish weird looking style. But it’s a style none the less, and I guess some people just think it looks cool.
This is an HDR photo I took the other day. High smoothing combined with a settings tweaking gave it an okay look. It’s my first real HDR and I’m still not crazy about the light differences in the sky plus the sharpness is bad. But I like the idea and I’m gonna keep trying.
I was really hoping this HDR fad by people on Flickr would go away very soon. Don’t get me wrong, HDR has it’s uses and can make pictures look good, but when people are using it just for the sake of it, it fast became overkill and a pain to look at.
Personally, I blame Photoshop CS2 for making it “easy” to do HDR
Some people seem to like it. This example by some dude is exactly the kind of overdone HDR that I just don’t get. Yet it has 140 ‘Great capture!’ type comments.
http://flickr.com/photos/kros/146810853/in/set-72057594068427209/
In the wrong hands, HDR is completely fugly. In the right hands, it has the potential to create some incredible photographs. Honestly, check out the photos beyond that link. They’re amazing.
Agreed, most HDR shots look like crap. This one looks pretty awesome though!
Ofcourse most HDR shots look like crap – just like everything else on Flickr. There’s a few people who can actually make good photo’s and a lot of people just dicking around. Take that same ratio and apply it to HDR: a few people who know what they’re doing and a whole load of ‘m just going through the motions.
I liked this one that popped up on del.icio.us a while ago though: http://www.flickr.com/photos/altus/322152193/
Yeah, I think you are missing your goggles!
HDR is quite gimmicky IMO, works well on some certain situations but not many. Certainly not a replacement for real DR.
I think it’s a cool
effect. 99% of the HDR on flickr are plainly done wrong (overdone in other words.) I agree with most of what’s been said above, but the thing is it kinda make it look like a digital painting (from Amiga age?.) I would definitely like to see somebody make a game using these graphics, or a motion animation made of overdone hdr snapshots. Don’t forget A Scanner Darkly was just a gimmick for its flash retroscoping.I think what you’ll find with most of the HDR that look crappy on Flickr (not all I’m sure) is that they didn’t actually take more than one photo with different exposures, they just altered the exposure in Photoshop which is silly because then it’s not true HDR.
when i first saw you mention HDR here the name that came to mind was Paul Debevec who’s done numerous works with HDR and other lighting methods in CG/VFX. i thought “oh this is good some CG on Flickr?”
but no, sorry to say that yep there’s alot of disappointing stuff on there. sigh
do people really just alter the photo and then call it “HDR”?? i can’t believe it…
I think HDR is the most abused technique on Flickr. HDR images should be used when the scene you’re about to capture has a luminance spectrum too wide for your film or sensor. Usually we sacrifice informations when we choose the exposure index. HDR can fill that gap. The problem is that too many HDR images I see on flickr don’t need HDR. I think nightshots like that one can look good in HDR. But 99,9% of HDR images suck.