HDR saves the day!

Last year, when Sony put HDR in their Xperia cameras I never understood why people were making such a big deal out of it. At the time I was the kind of guy who put his faith in Superior Auto and left it at that. A point and click warrior you might say. I might fiddle with the settings from time to time but not that often.

My skill level has changed a lot since then. I now tweek photo settings around when I can to make the most of the new features inside to try and bring out the best in my photographs.

While I was wondering around the beautiful universities in Cambridge this afternoon I really started to appreciate why people got so excited about HDR.

 Without HDR

With HDR

As you can see in this example, my friend is much more visible in the HDR photo than the none HDR photo. You will also notice that the shadow behind her is lighter too, making it a much less dim (and grim) photo to look at. However, you will also notice that the blacks and colours are slightly washed out in the background with HDR. In this example it made my friend look much more visible, though at the sacrifice of some of the colour and shadow depth from the rest of the photo, though in my opinion, it ended up being the best option. 

 No HDR

HDR

Another example above is Kings College. 

HDR seems to bring out the visibility of the image in front (often the image you want to focus on) at the expense of some mild colour and shadow depth. The great thing about it is you get to see both images well in the picture. The beautiful window box in front and the incredible Kings College at the back, rather than being limited to simply one.

HDR is something which could have been used to saved many old photos of myself, if I had the technology at the time. One photo which springs to mind is an old photo of myself on top of the Empire State Building, which shows the skyline perfectly, but I am simply a black shadow. If I had HDR then you would have been able to see both the skyline and myself in the picture perfectly and the photo might have been a main profile picture on social media rather than being left on my hard drive and forgotten.

However, its not all good for HDR. 

Like I said before, some situations its simply not suited. As you can see here, I took two photos of the Bridge Of Signs in St Johns college, mainly because from looking at my phone screen at the time the picture looked like it needed HDR. 

 None HDR

HDR

At first glace on my phone it appears the HDR has done another great job of bringing out some of the colour of the tree next to the bridge. Sadly though, once you take it off the phone screen and blow it up on to a laptop or TV you can really start to see how washed out the colours are, and after all the tree looked fine as it was. 

So be careful. 

If you dont need HDR then you are washing our your colours and black depths for no reason.

Over all the HDR feature has been a real life saver for me. It has really proven to be a useful tool and now I understand why people were making such a fuss of HDR when it was first announced. 

Its hasnt all been about HRD though, the Xperia SP has produced some fantastic photos today anyway, especially for an 8 megapixel camera on a 7 megapixel mode. For a mid ranged phone (and now a generation old) it has some great little features in its camera. 

Here is another good results today at the Mill Pond. I used the focus mode which worked quite nicely. 

Thanks for reading. 

For your pleasure, some other examples of HDR comparison, just in case you havent quite made your mind up!

 None HDR

HDR

 None HDR

HDR

Please let me know what you think!