Did someone say HDR photography?

Have you ever taken a photo of a sunset and found the resulting image not looking the same? Or noticed how shadows in daylight become much darker on photos than to the eye?
These problems are due to the camera´s limited dynamic range, or ability to store light information. If the camera is set to record a bright motive, such as a sunset, the foreground will fall out of the dynamic scope and become underexposed. You may choose to adjust the camera for the foreground instead, most probably resulting in an overexposed sunset.
To solve this issue, you may want to create an HDR-image (High Dynamic Range). Simply shoot several pictures of the same motif (using a tripod), each photo differently exposed going from very dark to very bright. Load those pictures into a software of choice, Photomatrix for instance, and go ahead and generate your HDR. The program helps you extract the best exposed regions from every photo and merge them in one single image. The method is best applied to motifs where the difference in light intensity between light and dark areas is small to medium. If the difference is too great, the resulting image will look slightly unreal.

I´ve made a couple of examples to show how the final image relates to the different source images (Require Quicktime):



You can see the full size versions of these in my photo gallery.

Have fun with HDR!