I love shooting HDR’s and panorama’s but keep forgetting the steps, so here is a note to myself and anyone else, who might find this useful. I use a Canon EOS 550D (T2I) and Photomatix Pro 4.1
Here’s an example of a recent HDR shot I took at Melk, Austria.
I also plan to shoot some more HDR at my upcoming NYC trip.
NYC is a great motive for HDR shooting with all the lights and shadows it has to offer. Here’s an example of my last NYC visit last summer:
I also love using HDR in museums where light is usually bad, flashing forbidden but taking pictures without flash is sometimes allowed. This was taken at Province House, Prince Edward Island, Canada last summer, it’s tonemapping is a bit much, I know, but I love it that way, it’s my favorite HDR shot so far:
I had to substitute the tripod (step 1) with a fence, so step 5 was very helpful, to avoid shaking.
Here are the 8 steps it takes to do this:
| 1. Use Tripod to make sure the three exposures are the same
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| 2. Use RAW Format – for larger range of exposure values and to avoid compression artefacts
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| 3. Set camera to AV-mode (for consistent depth of field) | 
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| 4. Limit to ISO 100 to avoid noise
(or in dark scenes as low as possible, like 200 or 400)
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| 5. Use 2 sec self-timer While some books recommend continuous shooting mode, 2 sec self timer is even better because you can take the hand off the camera before the camera shoots the pictures to avoid shaking the camera. Particularly helpful when you have no tripod and have to put the camera on top of some other structure such as a fence, pole, trashcan, cartop etc.
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| 6. Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB)
with +2 / -2 stops |   |
| 7. Take Pictures |
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| 8. Tonemapping
Load into Photomatix Pro for post-processiong and tone-mapping | 
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So here is the short version:
- Tripod
- RAW
- AV-mode
- ISO 100
- 2sec self-timer
- AEB +2/-2 stops
- Shoot
- Tonemap