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 p.1 #16 · convince me exposure fusion, blending, any sort of stacking is way different than HDR | |
chadbro wrote:
There are a lot of good, thoughtful answers in here. Just what I was hoping for. I hesitated posting the question because I didn't want it perceived as trolling.
I can certainly appreciate the natural-ness as opposed to less-so. But, as Jim alluded to, and Sunny at the beginning, is it simply a question of the sophistication of the software?
No, not really. As I described in my previous post, they are simply different approaches to merging multiple bracketed exposures. One is not necessarily more sophisticated than the other simply because it is the intended method. Some people *want* to make their images have that "HDR" look.
Without a doubt, Karel's point about the HDR software never being at the scene yet the person doing the manual blending has, draws a clear distinction between the different approaches.
It's somewhat misleading, because while the essential point of the argument is that any algorithmic approach is merely a model for simulating the perception of human vision, the point at which the images created by the camera and the eye begin to differ actually starts at the lens, and not at the post-processing stage. The camera lens doesn't even gather light in the same way as our eyes' lenses do. And it only gets more divergent from there. The imaging sensor is a very, very different device than the human retina. And above all, our brains process retinal stimuli in a way that is a neurological mystery still being unraveled by science. To pin the failure of a photograph to faithfully represent the DR of the scene (as we saw it) on the limitations of a post-processing method is a bit of an artificial distinction--notwithstanding the fact that no two human visual systems are identical and not everyone perceives the same scene; and that human memory is not perfect, so manual blending may only represent what we thought we saw, or what we wanted to see.
Mainly there is an aversion to the simplicity, and therefore crude-ness, of using a automated process. Similar to a comparison that can be made between working with a RAW file in Lightroom 3 or simply hitting the "I feel lucky" button in Picasa 3.
We don't consider image sharpening or noise reduction in software to be distasteful or crude, no? Why HDR? Does it seem like "cheating?" Is that perception justified?
With the evolution of software and bracketing, are we simply chasing a end-all, be-all look to a photograph? That is to say, I see a lot of helpful, and in most cases, by most posters, welcome'd critique that seemingly pushes folks, of many talent levels, towards a specific look?
What I mean is, while the feedback given is certainly the POV of the poster, just as the photo presented is the POV of the original poster, there is an awful lot of critique expressing a certain shutter speed is useful for water, and to more thread-appropriate extent, the desire to "bring out more in the shadows".
As the software becomes more sophisticated, are we expecting, and is it fair to expect, similar dynamic range in most photos If the shadows are dark, is our first reaction, "the shadows are too dark"? Does the knowledge of what is capable with software limit our ability to see what the photograph is, and more importantly, if that's what the statement of the photograph should include?...Show more →
I think it's unnecessarily self-limiting to view software post-processing methods in this manner. They are merely tools to achieve an intended result. Their existence is not, in itself, the reason why people choose to use them, but rather, in most cases, they were developed as ways of overcoming limitations of the camera itself. For example, noise reduction is a way of coping with the inefficiency of passing light through a Bayer filter, smoothing out ADC artifacts, and dealing with the natural physics of photons. HDR is no different in this sense--it is a way of overcoming limitations of the capture device. Use it if you want. But it's not a requirement.
The takeaway is that human vision is a dynamic, self-adapting, physical and biological process, which is at once surprisingly simple and mysteriously complex. In some ways, cameras can do better, and in others, they fall short.
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