Photofocus contributor Nicolesy ran a great post about HDR lately where she asked, is it a fad? The debate in the comments pointed out to me that most folks think you have to shoot from a tripod. While this is ideal, it’s not critical.

The image below was shot handheld. 5 brackets two stops apart each to capture the full dynamic range of the scene. I was shooting up from a dark alley into a bright sky.

HDR_Handheldbrackets2

I find that the alignment tools in Photomatix Pro are pretty awesome to compensate for shooting handheld. Plus if you modify your shooting style slightly, you should be able to pull this off.

I present one method for shooting handheld HDR, the “Tuck & Blow.”

tuck

  1. Bump up the ISO. Nothing insane, but a little boost can go a long way in cutting down how long the camera is open when capturing the shadow details.
  2. High-speed Bust. Set the Camera to a high-speed burst to get the frames as quickly as possible.
  3. Tuck Your Elbows. Cradle the camera and tuck your elbows to get the most stable shot.
  4. Exhale and Shoot. Yep, learned that one in ROTC class. Just let your breath go all the way out and then trigger the camera.

Here’s two more examples of what can be done.

First, another high-contrast daylight scene. I really like how the HDR version captures the engravings in the doorway better.
brackets1hdrhh1

Followed by a lowlight scene shot indoors. The image on the left is a single exposure. The one on the right is a subtle HDR shot with 3 exposures +2 | 0 | -2. The shadowy folds of the shirt pop so much better and the fish stand out more.

hdrhh2

You can learn more about Photomatix in our HDR Learning Center as well as in this lynda.com class of mine.

______