Hi everyone,

One of the first things that I ever read about HDR was, “you can’t shoot HDR handheld, you have to have a tripod”. Well, when I read the words you can’t do something it immediately triggers the rebel without a cause “why the heck can’t you?” reflex in me. 🙂 So, given that I have a real dislike of tripods, I though, let’s go out and try and since then it’s become pretty much a way of life. It took me a while to hone my technique and work out what works best but it can certainly be done.

First of all it’s not suited to fast moving objects so I wouldn’t try and photograph a high speed train or suchlike using HDR but otherwise it’s fine. What works for me is the following when shooting 5-frame HDRs at +/- 2EV with one +/- 1 EV brackets.

To avoid camera shake which, as you know, is going to ruin any shot HDR or otherwise, keep in mind what the slowest shutter speed is going to be when stopping down 2 stops. If absolutely necessary raise the ISO a bit. The opposite can rarely happen on a VERY bright day with the faster shutter speed exceeding the limits and an ND filter will fix it but it’s got to be more that 1/8000 or 1/16000 of a second depending on my camera choice for this to be a factor for me, maybe in the Sahara Desert but not very often in Northern Europe! 🙂 . Keep as steady as possible between shots to facilitate good alignment of the images, if you can brace yourself do so. If you have a camera with REC view turn it off as it’s really disconcerting seeing the shots as they’re taken and completely mucks things up. I don’t photograph in artificial light and/or fast moving objects so I use the camera’s electronic shutter feature which is fine and it eliminates mechanical shutter wear especially as I shoot a lot of images. Set the camera’s bracketing mode to the desire number of brackets and the bracketing step and also turn on high-speed drive mode, silent shutter if possible. ,Lastly I use Skylum Software’s “Aurora 2019” the best HDR software that I’ve ever used and it does an absolutely fantastic job of assembling the frames, image alignment and anti-ghosting.

Here’s a scene I recently photographed, firstly the five frames taken and +/- 2 EV in 1 EV steps.

Here’s the first of these frames taken with no exposure compensation, straight out of camera with no processing.

Now an HDR of the 5 frames assembled in Aurora, again with no additional processing. This is much closer to what my eyes saw when taking the shot.

This is a starting point for me to process as the mood takes me. 🙂 . So, if you haven’t already, go out and try it, you might be pleasantly surprised!.

Kind regards

Leigh

PS. If you have a look at my recent post “Bright and Cold”, the cars and the people walking down the road were all moving as were all the leaves on the trees in this one!.