High Dynamic Range - HDR

Our eyes work much better than any photographic film or digital sensor. This is obvious when we are looking at a scene that mixes bright lights and darker shadows. While our eyes can see the details in both the highlights and the shadows, when we try to record that scene in a photography the results are often disappointing. This is because the dynamic range of the digital sensor (that is the range from shadows to highlights) is more limited in the sensor than in our eyes. If we try to capture the details in the shadows, the light areas come out all white. If we try to capture the details in the light areas, the dark areas come out all black.

High Dynamic Range photography (HDR) comes to the rescue. HDR is based on taking several pictures of the same scene, each one with a different exposure value and then combine them all into a single photograph. This way, at least theoretically, the result is a picture with a level of detail in both, the highlights and the shadows. At the same time, this gives the photography a new feel, different from traditional photography. These are my first attempts at HDR. The location is Ricketts Glenn State Park in PA. And somehow, while taken these pictures, my neck managed to get in touch with Poison Ivy… no fun!

evening by the lake

getting darker

i like the reflections of the clouds on the water

our morning hike

On a different note...

These pictures are different from the ones I normally post here. They are not infrared or pinhole but they are different in the sense that we don't get to take them all the time.

The pictures are still shots from video camera recorders that were installed in high altitude balloons. Last week I was involved in the launch and recovery of a high altitude balloon that bursted at 92,000 feet (28,000 meters). That is, flying almost three times as high as a commercial airliner.

A portion of the balloon can be seen at the left; the reddish thing is the parachute that will be inflated close to the ground during the descent. The cube object is one of the multiple payloads that contain the instrumentation, cameras, telemetry, etc...

It is amazing how just at 90,000 ft you can see the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space. Similar view below. The lowest outside air temperature was -60F (-51C).

The videos show extreme turbulence when the balloon crosses the jet stream; the payloads jump all over the place.

And just another view of the Earth...

What we are trying to do with this type of activities is to involve young boys and girls into science and engineering. Don't you think this is just fascinating ???

The lake

Sometimes IR images come out dull; no matter what we do, how we process them, they all look the same. But some other times they have that special magic that makes each slightly different process a new, more astounding image.

So this is one of these few times. At the lake.




Surreal colors...



Like a dream ...



Almost nightmarish...



Somehow attractive ...

and mysterious...

Texture and structure

Camping, summer 2008.

Bottom of the lake, at the shore with very shallow water.



After some color processing:



A different view:

Pintoids!

For a change, these are not infrared but pinhole photographs taken with a can of Altoids, about five years ago. Combination of Pinhole and Altoids = Pintoids. They are fun to work with, although you need a dark room to load, unload and process the negatives. The pictures here are scans from the negatives after being inverted.

Part of Deb's yard a couple of houses ago:

From the entrance to the apartment where I used to live:

Part of Deb's yard and the front of her van:

And just more yard:

I haven't processed film for several years now, but just looking at them makes me want to do it again. Maybe this summer ....

What do you get when do mix...

.. an Infrared-converted camera and a fisheye lens???


The answer is .... more fun!

These are just a couple of shots that I took outside of my house to test the new lens... Lots of possibilities...

First, from one of the windows of my house, after some processing

And some more different processing.

Straight out of the camera.

From the yard, close to ground level, with a channel swap:

Changing only one channel?

Straight from the camera:

The lake

On a lake, summertime. Same image, just with a channel swap difference betwween them. This one only has the trees looking surreal; the water and sky could have been this color that well, although they were not.

In this one below, it all looks more surreal. Somehow I like a bit better this stronger effect... Would you swim in this lake?

One of my favorites

Same day, same place, same picture now three different approaches to false color processing. Not sure which one I like the most, maybe all the three the same. After all, I did like six or seven different processing techniques. I was not too happy with any of the B&W renditions though.

Somehow I tend to like the blue hues though.

Maybe more realistic?

Same scene, false color

These pictures come from different processing, all of them, including the B&W from the last post, from the same original picture.

This one below is somehow my favorite from this batch; I especially like the similar but different tones of the path on the ground and the grassy area around.

The more surreal colors in the one below make it also attractive, although it is somewhat similar to the duotone from the previous post.

A different processing technique, although it does not have enough punch for my taste.

Between the color and the B&W renditions, I would take the B&W for this particular picture as my favorite.

New camera, new pictures

These new pictures have been taken with a new Nikon D-60 modified by Life Pixel using their Enhance Color filter after removing the standard IR filter. I have to say that I am more pleased with these results than the pictures that I got from my older D-40 although I believe a good part of the problem was the inability of the D-40 to modify the white balance in a controlled way.

All these five images are the result of monochrome processing from the same picture. The one below is the result of a direct grayscale conversion.

These two images come from discarding a color channel or adjusting the channel mixer for a monochrome output:

A sepia filter in the monochrome image gave me this result:

And playing with doutones for the same monochrome image gave me this one:

It is hard to say which one I like the best. Also, because of the Enhance color filter, the results do not seem too spectaular in B&W images. Maybe the light in the scene didn't help too much either. But the duotone, the last one, seems to be the one I like the most from this set. Next time, some color processing from the same picture.