I do like to talk up how great our HDRI skies are for 1-step image based lighting and how you don’t need additional lights and so on, however every project is different and sometimes you might like to tweak a few things! Over the years I’ve had a number of emails …
Read More »Clamped MDRIs vs Un-Clamped HDRIs.
What are clamped or un-clamped HDRIs? I’ve been writing about this a lot lately as I think HDRIs in general are often used only for ambient lighting, when in fact if shot correctly, they can be used in a much simpler (and more realistic), 1-step lighting workflow. Originally I made …
Read More »Why are the time-lapses taking so long?
So I’m a ways overdue now aren’t I? I put Q4 as the release date and now that’s long gone. So what’s going on with the time-lapses? Good question! Initially I was testing the best shooting setup to capture the HDRIs as efficiently and accurately as possible, and since that …
Read More »32bit Sharpening for HDRI
Here’s another quick post if you’re interested in creating sharpened HDRIs (not tone-mapped HDRIs, which is pretty straight forward and actually LDR). The issue when sharpening an HDRI (a 32bit .hdr or .exr) is that software like Photoshop wasn’t built to sharpen 32bit, HDR images. So while most of your …
Read More »Lens twisting to eliminate flickering on the D800 + Sigma 8mm
My time lapse HDR sky project has hit a bit of a snag, and that snag is flickering. When using an aperture setting of f11, I’m getting flickering due to the aperture opening slightly differently each time, a common problem with time lapse and stop motion when using auto lenses …
Read More »3rd Time-Lapse HDRI Sky Dome
This is another older HDRI sky shot at f3.5. As a test, I developed the NEFs with -2 exposure per bracket in order to try and get more dynamic range. However, I’ve since been informed that changing exposure like this doesn’t exactly achieve much, and results in a slight loss …
Read More »1, 2, 3 and 4 EV Step Bracketing for HDRI in Image Based Lighting
So far I’ve been shooting 2EV gaps with the Promote Control for my HDRI brackets, and as the default recommended setting, this has worked fine. However a few things have made me want to test 3EV steps: Mostly unsure what the difference is between 2 and 3EV steps. I’ve heard …
Read More »New HDR time-lapse challenges at f11
So with the first few HDR skies shot, merged and test rendered into animations, I was quietly confident that this might not be quite as hard as I thought. Not Quite! My assumption that people would prefer slightly reduced dynamic range (shooting at f3.5 iso 100) vs the full dynamic …
Read More »