LightningPaul

Two industrial towers. They were still in construction. I don't know for what the purpose is of them. Anyone any ideas?


TECH-INFO: I would like to explain and demonstrate some personal thoughts and experiences about HDRi or High Dynamic Range Imaging. Feel free to disagree completely ;-)

For the picture above I took 5 images to capture the full dynamic range of light. A range of probably 10 to 12 stops. Almost all cameras cannot capture that without blocking shadows or blowing out highlights.

I used Photomatrix to combine all of them into one HDR 32 bit image. Such an image contains a huge range of tones, which is fantastic for someone who likes editing a lot. Here I only used tone compression to map the HDR image to a 8 bit JPG. No enhancement of details which is normally my primary goal of using Photomatrix.

This is how an image could and probably would look like if digital camera sensors would be able to capture a (much) higher dynamic range. Because of the necessary tone compression to 8 bit, most details and tone graduations in the clouds and the surface of the towers are lost. Also most LCD screens can only show 8 or 10 bits (for each RGB channel).

After tone compression, I only increased contrast in this image so it becomes comparable with the next two posts. Tomorrow I'll post the same but using the details enhancer instead of tone compression. And continue my discussion of HDRi.