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different levels of DRO & HDR

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kev777zero

kev777zero

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I would like to know what settings do NEX users use for the DRO or HDR function (or do yo usually turn it off?). Is it best kept at auto? are there any downsides in pushing DRO to level 5 or HDR to EV6? thanks
--



http://www.wix.com/drkevinlyu/photography
 
kev777zero said:
I would like to know what settings do NEX users use for the DRO or HDR function (or do yo usually turn it off?). Is it best kept at auto? are there any downsides in pushing DRO to level 5 or HDR to EV6? thanks
Click to expand...
If there would be 1 answer, there would be no need to make it adjustable.
It just depends on how much you want to lower the contrast in that image.

Regards,
Karsten
 
Best advice, pick a subject and snap away (while adjusting the range between shots). Everyone has different tastes... ;)

There was another thread in here (try the search) that had some interesting answers to the question, "Should I leave DRO on all the time?". Or something like that. You may want to search for that one.
Karsten Meyer said:
kev777zero said:
I would like to know what settings do NEX users use for the DRO or HDR function (or do yo usually turn it off?). Is it best kept at auto? are there any downsides in pushing DRO to level 5 or HDR to EV6? thanks
Click to expand...
If there would be 1 answer, there would be no need to make it adjustable.
It just depends on how much you want to lower the contrast in that image.

Regards,
Karsten
Click to expand...
--

A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including my life".

(...from the generation that still uses capital letters and punctuation...)
 
Generally and by design, DRO is meant to be kept on most or all of the time - keeping it on Auto will do a very good job in keeping highlights & shadows in check and delivering nice punch to your photos as long as you get the general exposure correct. Occasionally, you may find the Auto effects are either insufficient and want to bump it up manually, or not wanted, in which case you can turn it off or dial it down manually. But overall, I'd recommend that a lot more NEX users actually turn it on, put it on Auto, and learn how it works and what it does. It's not simply applying a generic tone curve - it's a ridiculously advanced system and extremely capable.

HDR on the other hand is generally meant to be used manually, if and when the scene calls for it. On HDR mode, I rarely find need for Auto myself - I'm determining when a scene calls for usign HDR, so I find setting the amount manually to work best...usually I stick with low amounts, from 1 to 3 - only very occasionally going higher if dealing with something extreme.

--
Justin
galleries: http://www.pbase.com/zackiedawg
 
I normally leave DRO set to Auto, but I also shoot RAW so it doesnt have any effect on my files. When I want to shoot HDR which required that I shoot JPEG I will check the exposure for the shadows and the highlights and set the HDR accordingly

--
My kit - D200, 10.5mm f/2.8D, 35mm f/1.8G, 50mm f/1.4G & 70-300VR
NEX-5 18-55 OSS

Lenses worth mentioning owned and sold 12-24 f/4, 17-55 f/2.8, 35-70 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8, 20mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4D, 60mm f/2.8D, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2D-DC, 180mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4D-ED
 
Ed,

What is your thought process for that?

Walk me through it (if you don't mind).

I guess I never considered that as a preliminary step to HDR. On my Canon, I shot bracketed shots at +1.6 and -1.6 as a standard rule. How does one determing how much bracket is needed?
edwardaneal said:
I normally leave DRO set to Auto, but I also shoot RAW so it doesnt have any effect on my files. When I want to shoot HDR which required that I shoot JPEG I will check the exposure for the shadows and the highlights and set the HDR accordingly

--
My kit - D200, 10.5mm f/2.8D, 35mm f/1.8G, 50mm f/1.4G & 70-300VR
NEX-5 18-55 OSS

Lenses worth mentioning owned and sold 12-24 f/4, 17-55 f/2.8, 35-70 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8, 20mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4D, 60mm f/2.8D, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2D-DC, 180mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4D-ED
Click to expand...
--

A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including my life".

(...from the generation that still uses capital letters and punctuation...)
 
first let me say that I dont do HDR very often so I am not a expert of any kind - fact is I never even tried HDR before I got my NEX.

Having said that when I found I could adjust the ev range of the HRD feature on the NEX it just seemed natural that the best way for me to determine what setting to use would be to use the cameras meter to see what the correct exposure for the shadows is and then to do the same thing with the bright areas of the scene. Knowing this I can then select the EV range I think the HDR should span in order to get everything exposed properly.

As a side note if I am out and about with family and dont want to spend the time doing it this way I just set it to Auto HDR - So far I have been pretty happy doing it this way and might actually start doing this for most of my HDR shots - heck if I dont like what I see on the screen I can always do it again the long way :)
Slynky said:
What is your thought process for that?

Walk me through it (if you don't mind).

I guess I never considered that as a preliminary step to HDR. On my Canon, I shot bracketed shots at +1.6 and -1.6 as a standard rule. How does one determing how much bracket is needed?
edwardaneal said:
I normally leave DRO set to Auto, but I also shoot RAW so it doesnt have any effect on my files. When I want to shoot HDR which required that I shoot JPEG I will check the exposure for the shadows and the highlights and set the HDR accordingly

--
My kit - D200, 10.5mm f/2.8D, 35mm f/1.8G, 50mm f/1.4G & 70-300VR
NEX-5 18-55 OSS

Lenses worth mentioning owned and sold 12-24 f/4, 17-55 f/2.8, 35-70 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8, 20mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4D, 60mm f/2.8D, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2D-DC, 180mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4D-ED
Click to expand...
--

A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including my life".

(...from the generation that still uses capital letters and punctuation...)
Click to expand...
--
My kit - D200, 10.5mm f/2.8D, 35mm f/1.8G, 50mm f/1.4G & 70-300VR
NEX-5 18-55 OSS

Lenses worth mentioning owned and sold 12-24 f/4, 17-55 f/2.8, 35-70 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8, 20mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4D, 60mm f/2.8D, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2D-DC, 180mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4D-ED
 
Thans, Ed.

I should probably do something like that, too.

On a side note, my wife doesn't share my enthusiasm for photography much at all. Just pausing for a quick photo irritates her. For serious stuff, I have to go out by myself. So, in a way, I can understand your comment very well. ;)
edwardaneal said:
first let me say that I dont do HDR very often so I am not a expert of any kind - fact is I never even tried HDR before I got my NEX.

Having said that when I found I could adjust the ev range of the HRD feature on the NEX it just seemed natural that the best way for me to determine what setting to use would be to use the cameras meter to see what the correct exposure for the shadows is and then to do the same thing with the bright areas of the scene. Knowing this I can then select the EV range I think the HDR should span in order to get everything exposed properly.

As a side note if I am out and about with family and dont want to spend the time doing it this way I just set it to Auto HDR - So far I have been pretty happy doing it this way and might actually start doing this for most of my HDR shots - heck if I dont like what I see on the screen I can always do it again the long way :)
Slynky said:
What is your thought process for that?

Walk me through it (if you don't mind).

I guess I never considered that as a preliminary step to HDR. On my Canon, I shot bracketed shots at +1.6 and -1.6 as a standard rule. How does one determing how much bracket is needed?
edwardaneal said:
I normally leave DRO set to Auto, but I also shoot RAW so it doesnt have any effect on my files. When I want to shoot HDR which required that I shoot JPEG I will check the exposure for the shadows and the highlights and set the HDR accordingly

--
My kit - D200, 10.5mm f/2.8D, 35mm f/1.8G, 50mm f/1.4G & 70-300VR
NEX-5 18-55 OSS

Lenses worth mentioning owned and sold 12-24 f/4, 17-55 f/2.8, 35-70 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8, 20mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4D, 60mm f/2.8D, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2D-DC, 180mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4D-ED
Click to expand...
--

A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including my life".

(...from the generation that still uses capital letters and punctuation...)
Click to expand...
--
My kit - D200, 10.5mm f/2.8D, 35mm f/1.8G, 50mm f/1.4G & 70-300VR
NEX-5 18-55 OSS

Lenses worth mentioning owned and sold 12-24 f/4, 17-55 f/2.8, 35-70 f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8, 20mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2, 50mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4D, 60mm f/2.8D, 85mm f/1.8, 105mm f/2D-DC, 180mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4D-ED
Click to expand...
--

A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America," for an amount of "up to and including my life".

(...from the generation that still uses capital letters and punctuation...)
 
I can't seem to find the setting to change the level of DRO or HDR in NEX C3. Is only auto HDR/DRO available?
 
Normally I try to adjust HDR or DRO to match what my eyes can see. HDR seems to work especially well in low light situations.

As for actual vallues, DRO on auto seems adequate.

HDR on 6.0 eV seems pretty good for night time scenes, but it's definitely scene depending. When you think about it, under different lighting and shooting situations you will have groupings of color and luminosity information distributed along the entire eV range. At night, outdoors, you usually have lights that are very high on the eV scale and illuminated objects which tend to be low. So having a large eV range helps. In doors, the information may be grouped closer together, so you have to adjust the range to get the maximum coverage. Since your camera has a finite dynamic range, you adjusting eV values too high could result in you missing the information you want.
 
The DPR review of the NEX-7 has some interesting graphs about how different HDR levels affect the overall tone map of the image.

Brackets of 1-3 EV appear to do a good job of increasing DR while keeping a realistic tone map. Levels from 4-6 have a somewhat flatter tone map that can result in a flat-looking, low contrast image. (Makes sense since with that broad a bracket I'd want to use more than 3 exposures.)
 
physguy88 said:
Can someone confirm that it has no effect on raw?
Click to expand...
While DRO has no direct effect on raw, on the a-mount cameras it does change the base exposure (it slightly under exposes to protect highlights.)

I always wondered why people said the A700 slightly overexposed, when all my shots were about 1/3 to 2/3 ev underexposed (I had to add that much when converting from raw.) Then I read about DRO deliberately underexposing and it made sense (I had "DRO+" set on my A700.)

Since I don't seem to have any problem with noise in my raw conversions, I keep DRO+ set on my camera for the JPEGs (I shoot raw + Jpg.)

Sony has modified its implementation of DRO over the years so it may be somewhat different on the NEX. Nice thing is that you can test different settings in different situations for "free".

tom
 
That's a really interesting observation tom. I will look to see whether there's a difference next time I shoot.
 
Yeah, and what's with all the hand-holding? How can one both carry shopping bags, hold hands, and shoot photos at the same time? It's not very easy! :)
Slynky said:
On a side note, my wife doesn't share my enthusiasm for photography much at all. Just pausing for a quick photo irritates her. For serious stuff, I have to go out by myself. So, in a way, I can understand your comment very well. ;)
Click to expand...
 
I don't EVER use DRO on my N3 and 5N. I rather pull the shadows up in my JPGs in Lightroom. I think the processing in the camera is inferior, what goes to sharpness or noise to the LR algorithms.

I also find that the NEX3 HDRs were much better metered and executed. I find the HDRs from the 5N worse as far as exposure coverage goes.

However the great, lively and exact colors from the 5N JPEGs overshadow all of these quirks... Eventhough I REALLY DON'T LIKE the smudgy look of the OOC JPEGs.

Btw... w(s)hite balance in natural or artificial light is still years behind the results I am used getting from my Oly EP1.
 
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