Here’s an educational time-lapse tutorial by Los Angeles-based architectural photographer Mike Kelley in which he walks through how he goes about photographing buildings. His technique might be described “manual HDR” — after shooting the building over a longish period of time to capture different lightings, he then enters the scene and lights different areas of the building using two Canon 430EX Speedlites. Afterward, he loads the stills into Photoshop and selects different portions of the scene from different photos depending on the lighting he wants. The finished composite photo ends up looking as if it were lit by a large number of Speedlites.

(via Strobist via Fstoppers)

Late last year we showed you an interesting demonstration of HDR video filmed using two Canon 5D Mark IIs. The cameras captured the exact same scene at different exposure values using a beam-splitter. Now, a new camera called AMP has been developed that captures real-time HDR video using a single lens. The trick is that there are two beam-splitters in the camera that take the light and direct it onto three different sensors, giving the system a dynamic range of 17 stops. Check out some sample clips in the video above — they might be pretty ugly, but the technology here is pretty interesting.
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Here’s a good example of when HDR photography is useful: NASA created this image of the Space Shuttle Endeavour lifting off for the final time by combining six separate photographs.

Each image was taken at a different exposure setting, then composited to balance the brightness of the rocket engine output with the regular daylight levels at which the orbiter can be seen. The processing software digitally removes pure black or pure white pixels from one image and replaces them with the most detailed pixel option from the five other images. This technique can help visualize debris falling during a launch or support research involving intense light sources like rocket engines, plasma experiments and hypersonic vehicle engines. [#]

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In mid-2010, Time Magazine showed off a demonstration of a slick tablet app they were making in collaboration with The Wonderfactory. As it became widely shared across the web, HDR photographer Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs started receiving messages from fans who spotted his work in the video demo. Problem was, he had never given the magazine or the agency permission to use his work.
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Here’s a beautiful tone mapped HDR time-lapse video of Las Vegas shot by Philip Bloom using a few Canon DSLRs and a Panasonic GH2. He spent 5 days shooting, and many more processing the bracketed photographs using Photomatix Pro. It’s pretty amazing seeing Las Vegas go from day to night and then back again — all in HDR. To find out how Bloom did this, check out the behind-the-scenes writeup and video over on his blog.

Flickr user Paul Little creates surreal images he calls “HDR Mixes” by combining different photographs with the help of HDR software. While you’re normally supposed to feed the program multiple versions of the same photo (which are bracketed), with HDR Mixes you use two photos of the same scene and a third that’s completely unrelated.
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Here’s a cool and creative video that will only take 6 seconds of your time. Photographs from 3 different locations were taken every day over the course of six months, converted to HDR imagery, and combined into this short time-lapse video that shows the changing of a face and of seasons.

The changing of seasons in HDR is an interesting concept that we hope to see more of in the future!

Thanks for the link, IA!

Patryk Kizny created this short HDR time-lapse film titled “The Chapel” that explores the inside of a Protestant chapel located in Zeliszów, Poland built in 1797. The HDR imagery gives the video a eerily beautiful surreal look that makes the video look like it came from a video game.
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Reddit user MacTuitui created this simple diagram (click to enlarge) explaining the idea behind HDR photography. The first low dynamic range (LDR) taken normally with a camera isn’t able to capture much of the detail found in the highlight and shadow areas of the scene. Two (or more) photographs are then taken at different exposure values to capture a wider range (the bracketing step) and subsequently combined into a single image with a high dynamic range (HDR). Since most displays aren’t capable of displaying this full range, the image needs to be tone mapped to have its appearance approximated on LDR screens.

Update: This giveaway is now over. The winners were randomly selected and announced below.

HDRSoft recently released version 4.0 of their popular HDR processing program Photomatix, and this week we’re giving away three (3) licenses to our awesome readers. These are for the Photomatix Pro Plus Bundle worth $119 each.

To enter this giveaway, all you need to do is:

Tell us your favorite book

There are two ways to enter, and doing both methods will give you 2 entries in the contest, and thus double the chance the win!

1. Leave your response as a comment on this post
2. Tweet your response, and include the following link to this post anywhere in the tweet: http://j.mp/pphdrsoft

   As long as the link appears in the tweet, you’ll be automatically entered in the contest.

This contest will end in three days on Sunday, October 10th, 2010. We’ll randomly pick a winner using random.org and update this post. Good luck!

Update: This giveaway is now over. We received 422 entries via comment and 229 entries via Tweet for 651 entries total. Here are the three randomly selected winners:

#479: @ribnar

My all time fav book is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#524: @davensjournal

“Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein

#376: M Hanif Bay (@DiviAugusti)

Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa

Congratulations! Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize. We’ll be contacting you as well.

Thanks for participating in this giveaway and sharing your favorite books with all of us! Check back soon for another giveaway.

A big thanks to HDRSoft for providing the prizes for this giveaway!

Image credit: HDR IR Brickworks valley by Lone Primate