Thursday, November 1, 2007

HDR Tutorial for Canon EOS 400D


Schlossberg Stiege in Graz
Originally uploaded by theowl84
In the last weeks I had some time to experiment with my new camera. One of the reasons for buying it was the possibility to use the Auto Exposure Bracketing function (AEB). This setting can be used to let the camera shot three pictures with different exposure settings.

I use a mini tripod and the timer function to avoid any shake of the camera, especially for night-time-HDRs. I'll give you a small tutorial about how I do it:
  • Mount the camera on a mini tripod
  • Set the camera into Aperture-Priority (Av)
  • Get into the menu "Camera 2" and set the AEB to -2/0/+2
  • Change the shoot mode to self-timer to delay the shutter by 10 seconds (press the button below the AV+/- button to do this)
  • Find a nice place for the camera where it can stand on it's own. You must not touch the camera when the shutter is open.
  • For some scenes it's good to manually change the basic exposure to an adequate level (This is necessary when the brightest picture is too bright or the darkest picture is too dark)
  • Then press the shutter button and wait 10 seconds for the camera to start shooting. It will make 3 successive shots automatically.
  • Setup for HDR
  • The setup should now look like the screenshot on the right.
  • After the pictures have been taken you should review all pictures and assure that all details are at least visible in one picture (for example very bright objects should be clearly visible in the darkest picture)
  • If you are not content with your picture series, manually change the basic exposure and re-shoot the entire series.
  • Now you can load the pictures to your PC and use your favorite HDR software to create magic pictures.

A few examples
Schlossberg Tunnel HDR
You can see many other HDR pictures on my flickr page.

19 comments:

Saranya said...

Is this still a camera or some form of artificial intelligence? HeHe!

The Girl With Too Much Time said...

The picture is speechlessly amazing.

Anonymous said...

thank you!!!! very very usefull!

Anonymous said...

I can't seem to get my camera to do 3 successive shots automatically. I understand I will have to set some kind of settings to "burst", where do I do this? Thanks!

Great pictures, by the way.

theowl84 said...

You either have to set it to self timer (that's what I use to prevent any movement of the camera) or you can use the sequential (burst) picture mode. You can set both by pressing the button with the three overlapped rectangles and the timer (left above the ISO button)

Anonymous said...

very helpful, thanks a lot!

Poppy van Oorde-Grainger said...

yeah this is very helpful thanks.

Poppy van Oorde-Grainger said...

the black and white one of your grandpa....did you use a tripod? i am having trouble photographing portraits of people giving presentations in low light. i tried 1600 iso, medium quality, on program with the highest shutter speed it'll let me use... but the pics are blurry. any advice?

HEXBLVCK said...

Nice tutorial... i was looking this information. Thanks!!!

Greetings from Mexico

Lê Minh Chính said...

Nice tutorial but one question did you use flash in this shot???

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Great howto! Good job <3

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much for this tutorial!!! Beautiful pictures!!!

Anonymous said...

I will try as soon as possible! Thank you very much :)

Anonymous said...

You should consider not using the Program-Mode P.
The P mode may change parameters (that you dont want to change between the shots) to get the bracketed exposure you asked (-2/0/+2).
If the aperture vary between shots, you'll end up with 3 shots with a different aperture and consequently different depth of field.
It might not be that visible with cheap lense with little apperture but still.
Final result would end up blury in a weird way.
Camera should be set in Aperture Priority mode or Manual mode.
Ideally, only the time value should change, nothing else.

Anonymous said...
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Unknown said...

Big thanks from Siberia!!!

Anonymous said...

Realy nice! Good!
но фотки нихуя не от 400Д

brigitta said...

Thanks for the help!

Anonymous said...

thank u!!!!!