HDR: High Dynamic Range Photography

Dynamic Range refers to the range of light intensities that can be accommodated by vision, ie the various lights and darks that can be viewed simultaneously. Dynamic range is an everyday phenomenon: when you enter a dark room from a well lit room- your eyes goes blackout for a moment. As a photographer, the problem of Dynamic range really comes in picture when you're shooting in very bright or very dark surrounding. For a matter of fact, the dynamic range of human eye is 10,000:1 (our eye can distinguish 10,000 different intensities of light at the same time); a DSLR has a dynamic range of around 400:1 (which is much much lower than our eyes) and the monitor/ printed photograph has further low dynamic range than rest. In other words, our eyes can accommodate up to 18 stops of light, whereas a digital camera can accommodate up to 10-12 stops and monitor/ printed photograph can accommodate even less. 

To further simplify your concept, I am posting some of my photographs that I took in an auditorium last night.  3 photos were taken from the same nodal point in different exposures(-2. 0, +2). Finally they were combined to produce the final high dynamic range photograph.

The most commonly used and the most popular HDR softwares  are:

• Adobe Photoshop(File>>Automate>> Merge to HDR Pro)
• Photomatrix Pro (Software site: www.HDRsoft.com)

For more insights into the concept you can refer to: http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial/

for any other queries or suggestions, just reply back or mail to jishnuclicks@gmail.com

Making a 360 degree panorama

So after quite a gap, I'm back with my tutorials... and I swear its just got better. Today I'm going to teach you how to shoot and stitch a professional quality 360 degree panorama and all you need is a digital camera(any digital camera with manual settings) The best thing about this tutorial is that you can apply the same techniques with any digital camera you have and for any number of photos(you can combine 100's of photos), and create panoramas as big as gigapixel. A tripod is naturally preferred, but you can always find a way around it(if u you don't have a tripod, check out this link: http://www.philohome.com/tripod/shooting.htm ).  

To start off with here are the basic equipment you need:

1.  Digital Camera (in manual mode)
2.  Tripod
3.  Compass (to know the directions esp useful when you're planning to upload your work on the web)

Software required:

1. Adobe Photoshop: No photo is complete without photoshop, but the truth is that photoshop cannot stitch a 360 degree panorama. We need photoshop to clean up and refine the stitched panorama we get from
2. AutoPano Giga: Its gotta be the best panorama stitching software currently available in market (though many claim PTGUI as an equally good software stitching software, but APG's simple user interface and ease of use makes it my personal favourite). As the name suggests, the software can even be used to stitch very high resolution images(gigapixel images). For more details about the software , check out their website: http://www.kolor.com 
3. KRpano tools: these are small tools and droplets which are helping to automatically prepare the panoramic images for viewing and making them ready-to-use. It also incorporates the krpano Viewer, which is a small and very flexible high-performance viewer for all kind of panoramic images and interactive virtual tours. For details and download check their website:  http://krpano.com/

The A to Z of panorama shooting and editing has been explained in the following 2 videos, the first one I found in the net (the one I watched while learning panorama shooting). Though it explains both shooting and stitching part, but I rather want you to follow the 2nd video( the one I prepared, after dealing with all sorts of problems in the previous workflows).

Once you've created your panorama, you can be uploaded to  www.360cities.net . But keep in mind that for free account users, the site accepts panos of resolution of 6000x3000, 8000x4000 or maximum 9256x4628 only. 

Video #1   Shooting a panorama


Video #2  Post Production Techniques


Best of luck for your panoramic exploration and do please share your experiences with me. Or if you  have any query, feel free to ask it here or mail me at jishnuclicks@gmail.com