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