HDR vs single image, and the D800

Abandoned Chicken Farm Interior #2. Boulder County, Colorado, 2013

With this image, I was sure I’d need to combine three, four or five images to capture the extreme dynamic range between the highlights in the windows and the shadows in the ceiling. I certainly would have had to do that with my old Nikon D90.Enter the Nikon D800.

In post, I first tried the HDR method, combining three different images exposed about two stops apart.  Then, out of curiosity, I took the image that had the highlights reasonably well exposed and tried an experiment. I was able to pull out a bit more detail in the highlights, but then I was able to pull out a LOT more detail out of the shadows–so much so that I found that the single image worked out better than my HDR version in terms of artifacts, noise, and overall quality.

Impressive.

Oh, and the abandoned chicken farm? Weird place. You could still hear their frustrated clucks echoing about the empty spaces. I’ll need to do some research to learn something of “the rest of the story”.