HDR 101: Interior
How to Capture an Interior Space and All Its Charm by Christophe Bénard Despite the ongoing effort from camera manufacturers to increase the dynamic range of digital camera sensors, capturing the full range of tonal values in a scene remains a critical challenge for most photographers. But what is dynamic range exactly? In photography, dynamic range refers to a camera sensor’s ability to record details both in highlight and shadow areas. In other words, dynamic range marks the difference between the darkest and lightest tones in an image. The best sensor on the planet, which is the human eye has an astonishing 21-stop dynamic range while the best cameras available today can only achieve approximately 15 stops. In order to broaden the range of contrast in a single image while maintaining details in both highlights and shadows, digital photographers, for years, have relied on a post-processing technique called high dynamic range merging, also known as HDR. HDR consists of digitally combining several images taken at different exposure levels by varying the shutter speed. Unfortunately, over the years …