High Dynamic Range photography is and advanced technique that allows photographers to capture a greater range of tonal detail than one single photo on any camera. Some people say that HDR is the future of digital photography, the technique exists since 1850, when Gustave Le Gray rendered seascapes showing the sky and sea. Le gray used one negative for the sky and another one for the sea with longer exposure, and combined both into a single image.

I have read different debates and opinions since I started studying this technique, after all, the main intention is to represent the levels of intensity found in natural scenarios.

If you want to start trying HDR, you can set your camera to shoot in Aperture Priority mode, then shoot 3 images adjusting the exposure settings, EV 0, Ev -2 and EV +2 (images below have an EV difference of 1), take note that the more exposure variations you capture, the better resulting image you will get.

Another way to do this, is to adjust the AEB setting on your camera, and take 3 shots. It is highly recommended that you use a tripod while capturing, with this you will get a much clearer image, if you dont have a remote for your camera, try using the 2 secs timer to avoid any camera shake.

In the case of Canon EOS 40D and 5D Mark II you can adjust these values very easily.

In my case, I capture the images in RAW format, but i have read others that capture in 8-bit JPEG.

After capturing your 3 shots or more, download the images to your computer, you will get 3 shots like these:

-1 stop image

0 stop image

+1 stop image

After your 3 stack is ready, open your HDR application, In my case I use Photomatix Pro Plugin for Aperture:

Post-processing usually involves color correction, saturation, temperature, contrast and more, in the case of HDR, contrast, luminosity and saturation will be the main focus.

Final image:

There´s very good software available on to start using HDR, Photomatix Pro for example has a demo mode and the aperture plugin costs only $79 USD, theres also Adobe Photoshop CS2 and above, Dynamic Photo HDR and an open source software called qtpfsgui, here are some links:

Photomatix Pro: http://www.hdrsoft.com/

Qtpfsgui: http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/

There are also some very good sites out there:

www.hdr101.com includes tutorials and more

http://hdrcreme.com/ good place to share and a great site for reference.

Have fun!

Patricio

NOTE: The historical reference of Gustave LeGray, was taken from Wikipedia in the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging