gdanmitchell
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 p.3 #15 · ND Grads VS digital blending | |
At the risk of beating a dead horse...
I'm actually not trying to be dogmatic about coming up with a ton of ways to explain all of the various ways in which we deal with high dynamic range subjects. I wrote about that in an earlier post in which I pointed out that if the term HDR had been used to apply broadly to methods of dealing with high dynamic range scenes other than using a GND filter, we would have to expand it to encompass a very large range of perhaps surprising techniques including things like selecting a particular grade of film, dodging in post to "bring back" shadow detail, and much much more.
While it is true that a myriad of techniques can be applied to deal with the inability of almost all photographic systems to deal with the largest dynamic range subjects that we might want to photograph - e.g. all might be said to be ways of handling a "high dynamic range" - going that route either renders the term virtually meaningless or makes it mean a very, very different thing from what it already is predominantly taken to mean.
Yes, there is a logic to trying to re-make the terminology so that it is broader, but the current term "HDR" as an understood and useful meaning that refers to an identifiable approach to dealing with subjects of high dynamic range by a) making multiple exposures of the subject and then b) letting software automate the process of c) increasing local dynamic contrast by using data from the multiple exposures.
Practitioners of the alternative processes (GND filters, exposure blending, pushing in post, etc.) do not regard what they do as being equivalent and there are good reasons of this. The term "HDR" has a commonly accepted and understood meaning, and not only is it unnecessary and perhaps not useful to expand it to include other very different processes, but trying to force language to do things that it doesn't want to do tends to be unsuccessful. (In essence, HDR is taken to apply to a technique - e.g. this is what it does on my iPhone and on lots of other photographic devices and software that use the terminology.)
And it certainly isn't about categorizing things into categories of good or bad. HDR is a technique that can be applied in good and less good ways. The same can be said about exposure blending, the use of GND filters, dodging/burning, and more.
Take care,
Dan
Ruahrc wrote:
I have to respectfully disagree with Jim and Dan's arguments. The strict definitions of HDR proposed above come across as a little dogmatic, with some clear undercurrents of simply not wanting to be associated with producing "HDR" images primarily to appear "elite", "old school", or "better than others".
Saying that exposure blending is not a form of HDR "because we did it before the term HDR (misused as tone mapping) became widely used" is arbitrary, and kind of like saying that "selective cross pollination and hybridization of plants" is not a form of genetic engineering, only because ancient peoples developed and domesticated crop plants thousands of years before modern genetic techniques were developed. Especially if you consider the history of HDR techniques in photographic and video imaging, and realize that tone mapping has been around longer than you think. See a brief review on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging#History_of_HDR_photography and note that modern tone mapping was developed in the early 1990s, and similar concepts in digital image processing put forth almost a decade before that. Please raise your hand if you were actually out there manually blending digital captures back then, and then you might have some shred of validity in saying the manual blending of exposures using layers predates tone mapping and is a more "authentic" form of HDR. (and keep in mind that photoshop did not add layer support until 1994)
IMHO, one should simply specify the specific technique used in the image, if the photographer so chooses to divulge his methods. HDR is not a technique, rather a term to describe a family of techniques that achieve a similar goal, and so if you want to describe the technique(s) used to create a photo, state the specific techniques and not generalized catch-all terms. So if an image is exposure blended or a fusion of several exposures, state such. If an image was tone mapped, say it was tone mapped. If GND filters were used, then say that. Simply using the blanket term "HDR" is not sufficient to describe what was done to an image. These are all just tools at our disposal, just like a lens or a filter in our gear bag, and I hope to think that we would not be judging images here based on the technique used rather the quality of the outcome.
To finish, this whole debate on phraseology reminds me of a quote I once read. Unfortunately I no longer know the source (but it is highly possible I originally read it here on FM)
"n00bs argue about camera bodies, amateurs argue about glass, and the pros just let their images to the talking"
Norman...Show more →
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