35 Most Beautiful HDR Photos (?)

35 Most Beautiful HDR Photos? I think that's debatable, some may say they look like chocolate box paintings.


(Note: an HDR photo is one which combines multiple exposures to compress a very contrasty subject into one photo.)

Robb said:

HDR, if done correctly (usually it's not) can result in fantastic ranges of tones in a photograph. This technique was used by many photogs familiar with - and willing to do - in-camera masking.

Now we have digital tools, and many view HDR as a quick blast back to the days of LSD, photography wise.

Using the tools correctly is the key.

Absolutely. (I did not intend to sound like I dislike HDR photos in general.)

EmptySpaces points to this article in favor of good HDR images.

Rare photos of celebrities

Madonna and the Beatles as teenagers, and more.


Oh my gawd, look at Jane Fonda:

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And little Natalie Portman! I'm amazed how recognizable she is.

New book

Updated post with new book.

Wet and Windy

That Ian Lloyd-Graham is a good photographer, but boy, he's unlucky with the weather!



Photos from Brighton, UK, with Panasonic GF1 and 20mm lens (40mm-equivalent).

Good artist, but does not understand kids

Australian School Answering Machine

Thoreau on fashions

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
-- Henry David Thoreau

This is one of those all-time great observations.

And of course by "fashions", I think he didn't just mean "fashion" as in clothes and such, but rather all the ways people follow group thinking.

Michal returns (updated)

Michal Daniel has developed the first batch of pictures from his huge old-fashioned Arax camera. Rock and roll.

Update: not one to rest on his laurels, Michal has made a book of this!

Container Adventures

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Pentax K-x, 70mm F:2.4, 800 ISO, F:6.3 or 8.0 abouts.
A bit of darkening or saturation done on some of them in Photoshop.

One of the reasons I keep buying cameras is that they keep making them in better quality and smaller packages. And I think that right now, the Pentax K-x with the 70mm lens is the best image quality I have seen from a camera that size, it's lovely.

By the way, the second image challenged my hyper-focal abilities, meaning that if I focused on the tank, the trees were not sharp, and vice versa. I'm not so sophisticated with depth-of-field scales and such, so I just focused on something which I judged to be roughly equidistant between them, and lo, it worked. A wonderfully crisp image.

A couple of tree pictures

K-x noise trial

I made these high-ISO tests for a friend who's considering upgrading to a newer Pentax DSLR, like the K-x. And then I thought they might be interesting to others. Even if you don't consider a Pentax, they will be similar to other contemporary DSLRs with a reduced sensor (which is pretty much all of them under $2000). Albeit the K-x, surprisingly considering size and price, is near the top end, according to reviewers.

I chose subject with shadow areas, since these tend to show noise more. And low depth-of-field for the same reason.

Note that I have turned off the noise reduction the camera does by default, since I've found that computer software does a better job (not surprising, given the demands of the tast). I have used Nik's Define, but others are good too.
If you leave the in-camera NR on, you'll probably get a quality which is in between what I show here before and after.

You have to click on them to see the differences.
Something which may not be clear in the resolution Blogger allows is that high-ISO downsides are not only about noise, but also less sharpness/detail. And noise-reduction, while it makes for smoother pictures, tends to make this worse.

ISO 1600, no noise-reduction:

ISO 1600, with noise-reduction:

ISO 1600, no noise-reduction:

ISO 1600, with noise-reduction:

ISO 1600, no noise-reduction:

ISO 1600, with noise-reduction:

ISO 3200, no noise-reduction:

ISO 3200, with noise-reduction:

ISO 3200, no noise-reduction:

ISO 3200, with noise-reduction:

ISO 3200, no noise-reduction:

ISO 3200, with noise-reduction:

ISO 6400, no noise-reduction:

ISO 6400, with noise-reduction:

ISO 6400, no noise-reduction:

ISO 6400, with noise-reduction:

ISO 6400, no noise-reduction:

ISO 6400, with noise-reduction:

I have put the link to the 28MB zip file of the full sized pictures in Comments.)

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If you want comparison to other cameras, I recommend DPreview.com and imaging-resource.com for that. Also just googling around.
And 1001 has just posted links to a couple of similar tests.

More postal bitching

Maybe two weeks ago I got notice from the PO about an item which could not be delivered because it was "too large for my mailbox". So I asked them (through several channels, one the more uncertain than the next) to redeliver. It was Sunday (I guess they're working overtime), so I was not quick to answer the doorbell, so he... put it in my mailbox...