I walked out onto the lake this afternoon and spent some time taking pictures. I was basically just shooting a lot of one scene at different settings so I could merge them to HDR photographs. These are basically the same scene, the difference is how I converted the photographs down to an 8 bit from a 32 bit image. The first uses histogram equalizing, the second does something with gamma and exposure:
[img width= height=]http://photography.dpscarnecchia.com/albums/mt-tom-hdr/mount_tom_HDR1.jpg[/img]
[img width= height=]http://photography.dpscarnecchia.com/albums/mt-tom-hdr/mount_tom_HDR2.jpg[/img]
When I was done, I started messing around with the gamma and exposure settings in the down conversion from 32 bit to 8 bit images.
[img width= height=]http://photography.dpscarnecchia.com/albums/mt-tom-hdr/mount_tom_HDR_experimental.jpg[/img]
[img width= height=]http://photography.dpscarnecchia.com/albums/mt-tom-hdr/mount_tom_HDR_experimental2.jpg[/img]
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and basically it is a photograph that covers several stops more than a normal photograph, in one image. It's accomplished by taking multiple photographs (30 in this case) and merging them together, allowing you to capture detail in both the darkest and the brightest areas without washing them out or being full of heavy shadows.