Konstrastumfangs
Bring more dynamics in your photos every owner of a camera, whether it is an analog or a digital camera, knows the problem of the limitation of the available Konstrastumfangs the recording technique. On countless photos a blue sky is much too bright, the clouds are usually completely disappeared or just dull recognizable and the people under the trees are only a shadow of itself. Motives were always just been a special challenge for the photographer with high contrast ratio. In the peak of analog photography, ambitious hobby photographers had mostly grey filter in the luggage to darken the sky in very intense sunlight. The use of Flash to the lightening of the persons or objects in the shady areas was almost a standard procedure. A common method to adjust the contrast scale to the real situation was in the times, as they even developed the shots, at least Dodge or burn parts of the image during development in the darkroom. After all, a dynamic range of 18-19 occur in nature with intense sunlight and ideal conditions f-stops, which corresponds to a dynamic range of approximately 2,000,000: 1.
Although this contrast of our eye cannot easily at a glance to process, so but the human eye can capture quite 14 exposure units, about 15,000: 1, with a quick glance. Now given itself a modern digital camera can handle 10 f-stops, itself only under ideal conditions and using the RAW format is possible, you can see quickly the limits of recording technology available today. To the availability of affordable cameras that take at least the contrast range the human eye can perceive, it will take probably a few more years. The current solution to the problem lies in an intelligent post-processing of the images and a corresponding adjustment of the recording procedure. The simple-sounding but effective approach is that when the recording not only an image with an exposure setting makes, but takes an exposure series with different aperture and shutter settings. A good compromise is already taking 3 images, where these are carried with the aperture setting plus the underexposure (minus 2 f-stops) and overexposure (plus 2 f-stops), proposed by the camera.
Creating rows of 5 or more shots can still significantly improve the contrast expansion, however, the majority of today’s digital cameras allow only the automatic creation of up to 3 shots. A look into the manual of your camera is usually necessary for this. There are now a variety of HDR – software programs, which then generate a so-called HDR image on the computer from these 3 or more shots of the part, which has a much higher dynamic range than each individual shot. Because most output media, such as the monitor of a PC or an inkjet printer, can not directly represent usually these high contrast range, yet the tone-mapping joins the HDR process, what one of the HDR software packages that have been mentioned and a little dexterity is needed. Of course, there is the HDR photography to consider many things before a masterpiece can arise, such as the correct settings on the camera, using a tripod with long exposure times and of course the right choice of HDR software that exists as both a free and professional purchase variants. To the more intensive preoccupation with the HDR photography, there are very good books and also articles on sites on the Internet. It is worth in any case to venture once their own experiments as successful HDR photos are true eye-catchers on each presentation or photo albums. Jurgen Gobel.