After I published my tutorial for HDR processing, some people asked me what was exactly braketing and how it works. My apologize, I should have explain it before. It's true that even if for experimented photographers talking about braketing is like talking about the sunny daylight, it's not an obvious thing for beginners or just curious people. I'll correct my mistake on this tutorial, explaining what is braketing and how to apply it for HDR.
Things you need
Of course, you'll need a camera capable of braketing (even if you don't yet know what it means, you can read your stuff manual to verify that).
In the HDR context, you'll need a tripod (or a powerful arm).
Not a "must have", but it could help, it's a remote trigger.
I'll explain all this below.
The objective
As you may have understood by reading my previous tutorial (I hope), HDR consists of fusioning three (or more) photos with different exposures in order to obtain a unique photo well-exposed.
Braketing is the method that will allow us to take a serie of several photos with different exposures for a same scene. Let's see how to get that!
First step: No move!
The condition to get a good HDR result (even if Photomatix can align source images) is that photos taken with braketing are well aligned (or look exactly the same, just exposure must seem to have change).
Knowing this, for a three or more continuous capture, there is not much solutions: we'll have to use a tripod.
I talked to you about a remote trigger, it's also a good way to limit vibrations for this type of shooting (or maybe you can shot faster than your shadow)... I'm talking about vibrations that could occur at the moment you pull the trigger of your camera, but this is especially true for night shooting where vibrations are much bad than for day one's.
Next step: Braket!
I will not explain how to use braketing on your camera, but just the idea of it, how I manage it on my D7000. So please refer to your camera's manual!
The Nikon D7000 allows bracketing for up to three shoots with several increments of Exposure Value (EV, remember that acronym and refer to google for more information about it). When I shoot for HDR, I usually set up a bracketing of three photos with increments of 2EV. I also put the D7000 on continuous capture mode.
This means that at each shoot, I'll get the following three photos:
- The photo I saw through the lens, with an average exposure (I set up exposure metering on matricial mode, refer to your camera's manual if needed),
- An under-exposed photo (-2EV compared to the first one),
- An over-exposed photo (+2EV compared to the first one).
I always shoot RAW files to be able to adjust exposure at my own, without loss of quality.
This three photos represent the base of my future HDR work.
For next steps about HDR processing, go to the Tuto 2: HDR for black and white (with Photomatix plugin for Lightroom page.
