A Great Feature of the D7200 - Bracketing for High Dynamic Range Photography

What is High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography?

There is a very succinct summary on the Digital Trends website, which I reproduce here.

This is the link to the Digital Trends Article

The good news is that the Nikon D7200 is well equipped for HDR photography.

The D7200 includes a setting for taking HDR shots and processing the photograph in camera. This produces somewhat more vibrant shots but it has limitations.

The proper method is to use the bracketing feature and take a range of shots at different exposures, and then merge the images using HDR software. 

I've always wanted to create these dramatic photographs I've seen on the net, but I never realised before they were created using HDR and I didn't realise my very own D7200 could do this.

I had to try it out.

My limitation was no tripod (new one will arrive this week) and boring shots around the house. I decided to take a corner of the messy backyard because there was somewhere to rest the camera at the right height for the shots. I chose to do 5 photographs at different exposures. 

First, a normal shot taken just using Auto (not a true comparison because I only remembered 40 minutes later that I'd forgotten to take a normal shot, and the light had changed a bit):

A pretty ordinary and dark photograph. 

Next, the five shots at different exposures:

Now for the fun.

Into some HDR software, in this case using Photomatix Essentials 4. There are many settings and types of images that can be produced using HDR, from normal (in HDR terms and close to what the eye sees) to various vibrant and artistic options.

This one was HDR normal:

A massive improvement on the single shot taken on Auto.

I wanted a more dramatic and vibrant look, and this was HDR Vibrant:

Another nice look, HDR Painterly 2:

This is HDR Grunge:

And just to see what it looked like, I also ramped it up to HDR Surreal:

What next.

Obviously I need a subject more interesting than a messy backyard corner. I'm thinking a landscape that involves dusk so plenty of oranges in the colours. Using the D7200 bracketing you can vary the number of shots and the amount of difference in the exposure settings so there is lots to explore.

Thygo is a better photographer than me, and I'd love to see what he can do with his D7200 and HDR.

 

Comments

[Thygocanberra]

"Thygo is a better photographer than me" - I think that is not necessarily so.

Full marks for those shots. Sure can get some surreal outputs too.

I have read about HDR but never tried it yet - always seemed like another daunting software adventure ... Even for the D90 which has a bracketing setting.

I always wanted to try this in dimly lit church interiors but still with bright light coming through high windows. (slow shutter speeds though, so tripod almost essential)

But now cameras do it 'in camera' - D7200 does (but I still haven't tried it).

You can also do bracketing to get your HDR starting images without a bracketing setting - though this is where the camera being on a tripod really helps so each image is of the same scene and angle. You set the aperture and then take several images in range from underexposed (eg -1.0EV, -0.7, -0.3, 0, +0.3 etc) ...