Dear all,
Can I use the same method during the day compared to night to shoot HDR ? At day I will use bracketing feature of 7f 0.7EV and shoot at burst mode to capture the 7 shots at once. At night I use the same method but the results seems not really pleasant. Should I use the bulb mode instead of bracketing at night ?
The basic rules of traditional photography applies to HDR photography as well,that is composition,lighting and exposure.
See the quality of light,the early hours of morning and evening ,where the light is even.That does not mean that other times of day can't be useful.It depends on the subject and background.
Your eye can see 11 f-stops versus 6 f-stops of the camera's sensor of dynamic range,this is where hdr comes in ,merging the different photos into one where the dynamic range can be shown.What HDR does is lightening the picture to see details so exposure is critical.For instance the day time picture with the hazy or overcast sky because the meter is averaging it does not meter the sky accurately and
with hdr lightening the details the sky is technically overexposed so no detail can be seen.Same with the night shot.Since you only see details
with light and therefore in a night sky there is only darkness,no details can be seen.Hdr tends to lighten the sky again.Again the composite
pictures needed for hdr may be overexposed so you can see the details in the rooms and multistorey carpark are overblown.When the highlights are overblown or lightened the picture tends to look flat and uninteresting.So far I have not seen a HDR of a night shot for reasons explained but pictures taken at
dusk,that is the transition period from daytime to night time lasting only 30 minutes say from 6.30pm to 7.00/7.30pm. By the time you setup the shot you may not have much time left so have to work fast.
Coming back to composition although you are using wideangle,the subject (hdb housing) is not interesting,I know this is just a test shot
but if you crop it closer say only the main foreground block or the greenery on the left and cut off most of the sky,it would look more interesting.You can see more details.You are also using a standing straight on angle,try a different angle or height.
Lastly not all pictures benefit from hdr processing.Read a good book on hdr,I recommend Rick Sammon's HDR photography secrets for digital
photographers.The review link is below:
Book Review: Rick Sammon's HDR Photography Secrets for Digital Photographers | Picture Soup