Noob Question About HDR Exposure...

I know that the true way of doing HDR work is by taking your camera and putting it on a tri-pod and then taking three different exposure shots (above, average, and over). But my question is can't you just take one shot of what you want to HDR and run the RAW file through Lightroom and change the exposure on the shot, saving the file over to jpeg 3 different times, one for each exposure setting and still get the same results without the hassle of using a tripod? Just curious if this works and works well? Thanks.

taknbyd wrote in post #9148685
I know that the true way of doing HDR work is by taking your camera and putting it on a tri-pod and then taking three different exposure shots (above, average, and over). But my question is can't you just take one shot of what you want to HDR and run the RAW file through Lightroom and change the exposure on the shot, saving the file over to jpeg 3 different times, one for each exposure setting and still get the same results without the hassle of using a tripod? Just curious if this works and works well? Thanks.

Yes, you can do that, but that is commonly thought of as psuedo-HDR around here (faking it). The point of HDR is getting all the Dynamic range out of a scene you can, which may only take 1 shot, 2 shots, 3, or 10. Itll get detail out of dark areas and blown out areas you can't salvage just by sliding the exposure up or down.

Hope this helps.

Do some reading too

Thanks so much for the reply. I am very new to HDR and I am still reading up on it. I was just curious if this was a possible way of working around a tri-pod. But now that you said that you can get better detail out of darker areas and blown out arean that you can't otherwise get out of moving the exposure slider, looks like I'm going to be bringing my trusty tripod everywhere I go now.

As stated, you can do that, but you won't get the "same" results. You aren't going to get 10-12 stops out of a single raw file, and you can do that with a real HDR and lots of exposures optimized for the specific amounts of light in different areas of the picture.

I've had many successful HDRs taken handheld. Just as long as you arent needing shutter speeds any slower than about 1/60, you should be able to do 3 shots close enough that a program like Photomatix can realign them.

For those who just like the HDR-look, and have no actual idea nor interest about what is dynamic range in digital imaging, doing a single shot (preferrably underexposed in order to preserve the information in the highlights), and then make several replicas of it at different exposure values to feed them into Photomatix or into any other terrifying HDR tone mapping program, is as valid as doing 100 shots at different exposures. The only difference will be that with a single shot your final image will be much noisier, but you will achieve the same ultra tone mapped look you are seeking.

Regards.