MEETING MINUTES -- October 27, 2011

12 Members Present

1. Reminder of HDR Class to be presented by James Smith on November 5 at 1pm
2. No SIG meeting in November (Thanksgiving)
3. Next SIG meeting December 22 at 1pm
4. Reminder: PC1 in our lab has many HDR programs installed for members to try out.

Bill Graczyk presented suggestions on how to take and process HDR photos at an event like a Car Show where the subjects (car interiors, exteriors, and engines) are out in strong daylight (this means bright areas and deep shadow details) with limited camera accessibility and a lot of people around.  We viewed a number of HDR processed photos from the show.  Here is a summary of tips that were presented:

1. The objective in shooting under these conditions is to eliminate the tripod. There are too many people around and it is too difficult to get it set up in the exact location to get the best angle and to eliminate glare, reflections, and undesired elements.  This means taking the shots hand-held (good HDR software does a terrific job of aligning images) and to use the following camera settings, assuming you are using a good DSLR:
• Set Av to largest opening to give desired depth of field ( f8 or larger)
• Set photo quality to "RAW"
• Set continuous shooting of 3 frames at 0, -2, and +2 EV
• Set ISO at Auto ( with a range of 100 to 400 ) (going greater than 400 could yield "noise")
• Set exposure mode to "Evaluative"
• Set focus point at center
• Set White Balance to auto
• Get a steady footing, focus and push button half way, slowly exhale, hold steady and push shutter button down fully, holding steady until all 3 shots are finished
• Review your first couple of sets.  If your sets captured the full dynamic range and your slowest shutter speed is faster than 1/60, continue your shooting.  If your shutter speed is slower than 1/60 you may start getting blurry shots so you should consider a) using a larger aperture or b) reducing your EV range, or c) increasing your ISO.
2. If you have numerous photo sets, consider using "batch processing" if your HDR software program has it.  If you are using Photomatix, you have the following benefits:
• You can load in your whole session of shooting to automatically process
• Since the process is slow (I got 8 sets per hour), you can let it process while you do other things (I'd suggest checking periodically).
• You can set it to batch together only those photos taken within seconds of each other, so if you took some individual shots during the session, it will skip over those and not mess up your sequence.
• You must give thought to all the steps to set up the batch process since all the sets will be processed using the same adjustment settings.
3. Since all your sets have the same theme, you may want to set up a special "preset" of all the adjustment settings that suit your desired "look".  To do this, first process in Photomatix one set of photos that is representative of your session.  When you have moved all the adjustment levers to the right "look", click the "Presets" button in the lower left corner.  This will bring up a window where you can give this setting a name.  When you complete it, your new setting name will be there and you can select that as a new "preset".  You can select this preset when you batch process the rest of your session.

You may want to try out the "batch process" and "special preset" feature of your HDR program if it has one.  We can discuss it further at the next meeting.

Here are some of the HDR images taken at the recent Glendale Car Show: