Nikon D5100 Experience - High Dynamic Range (HDR)

Nikon D5100 Experience
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there is a wide range of lighting in your scene from bright areas to dark shadows. It will help to
preserve details in the shadows and especially in the highlights, and will help to prevent blown-
out highlights. It does this by underexposing the scene slightly and then applying a tone curve
(similar to the Curves you can apply in Photoshop) to lift the shadows and mid-tones back up.
You can specify whether this is Off, on Auto and thus used when the camera feels it is
appropriate to use, or on at various levels ranging from Low to Extra High. I don’t recommend
that you set this on Auto because then you have no idea if the camera is making use of it or not.
And now that you understand metering and exposure, how to read the histogram, and how to
make use of Exposure Compensation, you may want to turn this Off, especially if you are
shooting in RAW, feel you have control over the exposures you desire, want to adjust them how
you wish, and do not wish to allow the camera to do it on its own and override your careful
settings. You can then take more control of your highlights and shadows in post-processing by
applying your own adjustments and Curves.
However, if you are shooting JPEG images, you should experiment with Active D-Lighting in
high contrast situations and see how it improves upon the exposures that you meter and set. Try
setting it to N Normal and to H High and examine the results to see which one you are happiest
with. Note that ADL works best when used with Matrix Metering so that the camera can
evaluate the entire scene and make its adjustments based on the full range of lights and darks in
your image.
High Dynamic Range (HDR)
The camera’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) setting is used to automatically take and combine
two exposures to create a single image that will display a wider range of tones, from shadows
through highlights, than is normally possible with a single exposure. As discussed in the
Shooting Menu section, the D5100’s HDR feature is similar to Active D-Lighting in that it is
useful for high contrast situations with a wide range of lighting. Some differences, however, are
that you need to hold your camera still for both shots so that the two frames line up and are not
cropped when combined, and that it is not recommended for moving subjects. Use Active D-
Lighting for action situations. HDR is accessed in the Shooting Menu, or you can also set the
Function (Fn) Button to turn on HDR, or put it in My Menu for quicker access.
You may be familiar with HDR photography, which creates images that display a range of tones
closer to what the human eye sees than the limited range the camera is capable of recording.
This is commonly done using 3 or 5 (or more) images of the same scene taken at different
exposure values (see Auto Bracketing for Exposure), which are then combined to create a
single image that contains a fuller range of tones. HDR images can look anywhere from realistic
to hype-realistic, depending on the number of exposures and/ or how they are processed. The
D5100’s HDR setting will not typically give you results similar to the dramatic HDR images you
can create using HDR software and techniques, but it will produce images with a wider range of
tones and detail in both the shadow and highlight areas. It can be used in situations such as
where the sky or background might be overexposed and blown-out when the main subject or
foreground is properly exposed. Using HDR (or ADL) both the sky or background and the
subject or foreground will retain detail.