I have a sincere question about ethics and HDR photographs.

[Sirius Glass]

Like I said, it is an impression. It may be wrong, but I don't see many questions in this forum about how to make color prints.

I would rather talk about making color prints. I got spoiled at Kodak with the Keonite processor and an working on doing C-41 printing in a Jobo processor.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

HDR has a lot of distasteful use. Just like it is shown at first page.
More advanced use of HDR is common in real estate sales.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

In one sense digital photography has killed the innocence with which people approach an image. The truth of a picture has been under attack since the earliest double exposures and mattes, but the effort to deceive was more than most people were prepared to invest, and we satisfied ourselves with a little burning in or holding back.

Now some genres of photography are on life support as a reflection of reality. I assume landscapes are examples of graphic design rather than visual documents, a sky from Africa, a moon from the photo library, a cut and stitch of disparate features woven together with clever algorithms to create a Neverland no one seriously buys in to. Part of the return to film is a quest for authenticity and away from ISO invariance, HDR, pre-sharpening and a world mediated by slider controls and Photoshop.

Nothing like a slide to prove what you saw.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

HDR imaging is clearly a decisive divisive subject. I was schooled in fine art photography 20 years ago before digital photography was taken seriously.

Ansel Adams was (and is) praised for his technically precise images achieved through use of the zone system. Many people criticize high dynamic range (HDR) imaging as cheating, if I understand the issue.

It seems to me that a goal of many photographers has always been to most accurately represent what our eyes see. How is HDR different from using filters, the zone system, varying contrast paper, and dodging and burning in the darkroom?

Is this not just using currently available technology as photographers always have to produce the best exposed image possible?

HDR is a fad; nothing else and definitely not fine art because it is serendipity.

 

[MattKing]

One of the best users of HDR that I am familiar with is an architect and a photographer.
He designs a lot of buildings with a lot of windows.
He is very good at photographing his designs in ways that show illuminated interiors and well lighted exteriors - often at or near dusk.
His use of HDR in those circumstances is both subtle and effective.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

therefore uses the crutch of multiple images and mashing things around with software.

A curious way to look at new tools.

 

[Berkeley Mike]

It is also true that no one, by effort of will, can turn off the constant stitching and HDR-ing that underlies our vision.

Not so sure, but one can find the system's seams. Try this. Sit on a bench in a park and gaze out, just including the grass. If you allow you eyes to relax and defocus. In short order you will find that your brain creates geometric texture in the green grass and clones it out to the edges. That is the brain trying to see.

 

[removed account4]

A curious way to look at new tools.

couldn't agree with you more !

 

[alentine]

How is HDR different from using filters, the zone system, varying contrast paper, and dodging and burning in the darkroom?

The difference exists clearly in the Hand craft, Optical image and Tools.
Results will not be the same.
If we forget all the previous computerized steps, your expensive inkjet printer can brilliantly add a layer of color to the surface of the paper, but it will not match an optical image carving the emulsion on a FB print from a modest enlarger.

Ansel would not get this done with dodging and burning in the darkroom. You cannot burn in the smoke from the cig, the floor deatils and a zillion other areas even with 10 Ansel's doing the dodging and burning.

It's true that 10 Ansels could not rival what HDR could achieve, because it's very different from artistic point of view, the same way he could not rival what a brush or chisel could achieve.
For a passport photo made by a professional, it does not worth the search. It just does the job, the end purpose of that photo.
For arts, the differences are recognized by communities, galleries and even simple audiences.
Otherwise, all arts with time will merge to be the same art, same tradition, same name but different tools. It's not true and I think it would be not ethical to imply that all arts are the same but of different tools.
Sculpture is not 3D printing, no matter how much 3D printers wish to be called as "sculptors".
They should be proud and accepting being 3D printers.
Everybody knows, 3D printing is more capable, has much less mistakes because it's automated, much more accurate, cleaner and faster than Sculpture, but everybody recognizes the differences.
Sculptors will continue to do Sculpture as far as there is a recognition for the aesthetics of Sculpture.

 

[removed account4]

The difference exists clearly in the Hand craft, Optical image and Tools.
Results will not be the same.
If we forget all the previous computerized steps, your expensive inkjet printer can brilliantly add a layer of color to the surface of the paper, but it will not match an optical image carving the emulsion on a FB print from a modest enlarger.

this is where i don't agree at all...
its like the difference between a round and square pizza ... its still bread, sauce and cheese.

same old same old D v F rants i guess, nothing has really changed...

 

[slackercrurster]

An artist is not bound my limits. They are always dreaming and executing.

Forget asking permission...just do.

 

[Dali]

Not so sure, but one can find the system's seams. Try this. Sit on a bench in a park and gaze out, just including the grass. If you allow you eyes to relax and defocus. In short order you will find that your brain creates geometric texture in the green grass and clones it out to the edges. That is the brain trying to see.

Which clearly demonstrates that our brain is more driven by meaning than by "truth" or "reality".

 

[Berkeley Mike]

Another critical aspect of "vision" is that the brain anticipates experience, in general. It is based in the brains need to be efficient. It simply cannot function by taking in everything all at once or by assembling each and every detail to create a whole in every instant. Our brains would 'splode. It has many other things do do under normal circumstances and, in emergencies or survival stress, it needs the extra capacity.

A good way to understand this is reading. We stop reading one word at a time, Dick & Jane style, and develop flow, speed, and content management. We take initial cues in a sentence and anticipate words and phrases to come. The more we read the better we get at this.

Using that analogy, and that scenario, when we look at a page we scan and look for a place to land and start to read. My laptop presents 9" width of text and about 140 characters at its current settings. As I start to read I can see 12-14 characters well, i.e., "phrases to come." It will also fix on larger words, i.e., "emergencies." But wait, you say, what about everything else?

I'm glad you asked. As look at my key area everything else is out of focus. As I move left to right I integrate new words or short phrases and what was formerly in focus is now our of focus. If I hold still on my 3 words on this page (currently on the bottom) I can see what must be letters but they are not clearly in lines, the bounding box in light gray nearly disappears, the "insert Bookmarks" type blocks are sort of there against white and my black border sort of vibrates at the periphery. I can detect the color of the desk behind all of this but there is no detail.


Sciency stuff...

Cones, our color receptors, are most accumulated in one area. From Wikipedia:

Cone cells are densely packed in the fovea centralis, a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones which quickly reduce in number towards the periphery of the retina. There are about six to seven million cones in a human eye.

Rod cells are photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye that can function in less intense light than the other type of visual photoreceptor, cone cells. Rods are usually found concentrated at the outer edges of the retina and are used in peripheral vision. There are about 120 million rods.

Our peripheral vision doesn't have the acuity of our central vision. As such, detail is gone but...we can see movement and that saber-toothed cat that will probably eat us, moving the grass at a direction different from the wind, at our far right. Run, Lucy, run!

As had been ably described above by Maris, the brain scans reality and focuses on what is central. All that other stuff you see is a combination of low efficiency peripheral vision and "placeholders", concepts we have already scanned.

Wait for it.

Clearly, a camera doesn't see, let alone see what we see. It doesn't even look. It is aimed and allowed to gather light. The value we have of what we see is based in primal hardwiring and cultivation, the former most immediately, the latter a consequence. Both take advantage of the brain's need to anticipate to be efficient.

Wait for it.

And this brings us to HDR and, for that matter, 2-d art. It is all presented to us in one hit. It gives us a reality that we don't normally experience. That it looks unreal is a "yeah, duh" revelation, given the model described. Yet presented within the bounds of how we see, what we know, what we have experienced and what we anticipate, it becomes acceptable.

Wait for it.

Think about anticipating a meeting with a loved one. Upon meeting, if your long haired brunette has cut her hair to a bob you might not recognize her. She no longer fits in your anticipation. It can take a moment or two to adjust. We are constantly anticipating and adjusting to take advantage of our brain's need to be efficient.

Wait for it.

Hence, the caution around HDR and any computer development process. Done badly it looks weird or looks like a lie. Ethics is a whole 'nother thing.

 

[CMoore]

It might very well be me. Perhaps The World has moved on without me.?

This is my cellular phone

I fiddle around with guitar amp repair.
They run on these.....

This is my newest camera.

I listen to records on my turntable, and we still buy CD's and DVD's.
We have a television, but we not not "Watch Television"......only to view our DVD's. We have no cable television service.
I have noticed the same thing with peoples televisions when we go to their homes, that i notice with many modern day photos.....they look "fake".
My wife says the same thing. There is something about "HD" that looks fake or unreal to us.
Is it the "resolution"....any of you guys know what i am talking about.?
We were at a party...house of a friend of a friend...they had a Harry Potter movie on their giant television screen. It looked "weird".
Not bad or fuzzy or out of focus...just strange somehow.
When we watch a DVD our movies do not look like that.
When i print a photo in my darkroom, they look like a photo, not something else.
Are these modern Televisions/Photos "too good".....is that the problem.?
Hopefully i am describing, in words, what my wife and i have noticed in the last few years.....
Thank You

 

[faberryman]

I have noticed the same thing with peoples televisions when we go to their homes, that i notice with many modern day photos.....they look "fake".
My wife says the same thing. There is something about "HD" that looks fake or unreal to us.
Is it the "resolution"....any of you guys know what i am talking about?

What you are seeing are artifacts from the video compression the cable companies use. Blu-ray playback is much better.

 

[jtk]

It might very well be me. Perhaps The World has moved on without me.?

This is my cellular phone

I fiddle around with guitar amp repair.
They run on these.....

This is my newest camera.

I listen to records on my turntable, and we still buy CD's and DVD's.
We have a television, but we not not "Watch Television"......only to view our DVD's. We have no cable television service.
I have noticed the same thing with peoples televisions when we go to their homes, that i notice with many modern day photos.....they look "fake".
My wife says the same thing. There is something about "HD" that looks fake or unreal to us.
Is it the "resolution"....any of you guys know what i am talking about.?
We were at a party...house of a friend of a friend...they had a Harry Potter movie on their giant television screen. It looked "weird".
Not bad or fuzzy or out of focus...just strange somehow.
When we watch a DVD our movies do not look like that.
When i print a photo in my darkroom, they look like a photo, not something else.
Are these modern Televisions/Photos "too good".....is that the problem.?
Hopefully i am describing, in words, what my wife and i have noticed in the last few years.....
Thank You

Please let your wife tell us what she thinks you're struggling to say.

 

[CMoore]

Please let your wife tell us what she thinks you're struggling to say.

She did, like i said above.......
I have noticed the same thing with peoples televisions when we go to their homes, that i notice with many modern day photos.....they look "fake".
My wife says the same thing. There is something about "HD" that looks fake or unreal to us.

 

[jtk]

Another critical aspect of "vision" is that the brain anticipates experience, in general. It is based in the brains need to be efficient. It simply cannot function by taking in everything all at once or by assembling each and every detail to create a whole in every instant. Our brains would 'splode. It has many other things do do under normal circumstances and, in emergencies or survival stress, it needs the extra capacity.

A good way to understand this is reading. We stop reading one word at a time, Dick & Jane style, and develop flow, speed, and content management. We take initial cues in a sentence and anticipate words and phrases to come. The more we read the better we get at this.

Using that analogy, and that scenario, when we look at a page we scan and look for a place to land and start to read. My laptop presents 9" width of text and about 140 characters at its current settings. As I start to read I can see 12-14 characters well, i.e., "phrases to come." It will also fix on larger words, i.e., "emergencies." But wait, you say, what about everything else?

I'm glad you asked. As look at my key area everything else is out of focus. As I move left to right I integrate new words or short phrases and what was formerly in focus is now our of focus. If I hold still on my 3 words on this page (currently on the bottom) I can see what must be letters but they are not clearly in lines, the bounding box in light gray nearly disappears, the "insert Bookmarks" type blocks are sort of there against white and my black border sort of vibrates at the periphery. I can detect the color of the desk behind all of this but there is no detail.


Sciency stuff...

Cones, our color receptors, are most accumulated in one area. From Wikipedia:

Cone cells are densely packed in the fovea centralis, a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones which quickly reduce in number towards the periphery of the retina. There are about six to seven million cones in a human eye.

Rod cells are photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye that can function in less intense light than the other type of visual photoreceptor, cone cells. Rods are usually found concentrated at the outer edges of the retina and are used in peripheral vision. There are about 120 million rods.

Our peripheral vision doesn't have the acuity of our central vision. As such, detail is gone but...we can see movement and that saber-toothed cat that will probably eat us, moving the grass at a direction different from the wind, at our far right. Run, Lucy, run!

As had been ably described above by Maris, the brain scans reality and focuses on what is central. All that other stuff you see is a combination of low efficiency peripheral vision and "placeholders", concepts we have already scanned.

Wait for it.

Clearly, a camera doesn't see, let alone see what we see. It doesn't even look. It is aimed and allowed to gather light. The value we have of what we see is based in primal hardwiring and cultivation, the former most immediately, the latter a consequence. Both take advantage of the brain's need to anticipate to be efficient.

Wait for it.

And this brings us to HDR and, for that matter, 2-d art. It is all presented to us in one hit. It gives us a reality that we don't normally experience. That it looks unreal is a "yeah, duh" revelation, given the model described. Yet presented within the bounds of how we see, what we know, what we have experienced and what we anticipate, it becomes acceptable.

Wait for it.

Think about anticipating a meeting with a loved one. Upon meeting, if your long haired brunette has cut her hair to a bob you might not recognize her. She no longer fits in your anticipation. It can take a moment or two to adjust. We are constantly anticipating and adjusting to take advantage of our brain's need to be efficient.

Wait for it.

Hence, the caution around HDR and any computer development process. Done badly it looks weird or looks like a lie. Ethics is a whole 'nother thing.

Few of these posts suggest awareness that HDR is used routinely and artistically without being noticed, like lith or short DOF.

Strangely, some imagine that Velvia wasn't created to lie, like polarizers do.

 

[removed account4]

stuff printed on photo paper/metal/glass/plastic, see on a computer screen or tv set or movie screen or viewing booth
is not supposed to be reality. its too bad people insist all these things are or are supposed to be reality ..
they're not.

An artist is not bound my limits. They are always dreaming and executing.

Forget asking permission...just do.

uh huh !

 

[peter k.]

It might very well be me. Perhaps The World has moved on without me.?
fiddle around with guitar amp repair.
This is my newest camera.
Hopefully i am describing, in words, what my wife and i have noticed in the last few years.....

Two thumbs up... +10
Were just a little out of out of sync, but the world still moves on, in a different rhythm of time, and view how we see it.

 

[ME Super]

All photos are lies, but all photos are the truth (at least to that photographer at that time)!

This is very true, especially when talking about 2-D photographs. We exist in a 3-D world, and (most of us) have stereoscopic vision. Stereo pairs are less of a lie than your every day 2-D photo, but even those are still a lie.

True story - on my 1st roll of film shot with a Stereo Realist, I shot a picture looking underneath a fruit tree at my parents' place. It had some flowers growing up about 2-3 feet tall, and was a very busy photograph. I shot it with a small aperture to get big depth of field (hyperfocal distance even - f/16 and focused at 8 feet, so everything from 4 feet to infinity was within depth of field). When I looked at the scans I'd made of the stereo pair (I shot on color negative film), I almost didn't do the hybrid part of my workflow to produce the stereo pair. As a pair of 2-D photos, it was absolutely terrible. It was far too busy. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should just go ahead and make the file needed to print as a stereo pair. If I didn't like it, I'd only be out 20 minutes or so of my time to make the file, and 25 cents to print the photo. As it turns out, it was worth my time, because as a 3-D stereograph, it sung.

You wanna do HDR? Go for it. I've seen more than a few photos where the HDR was overdone, but if you do it right, the image will sing.

 

[jtk]

It's just a tool. I've liked crazy stuff and stuff nobody would suspect. People that worry about this apparently have no other concerns.

 

[RPC]

From the time the shutter is clicked to the time it is ready for viewing, a digital sensor image goes through many manipulations by camera software and user software. What's one more?

 

[RPC]

Like I said, it is an impression. It may be wrong, but I don't see many questions in this forum about how to make color prints.

The younger crowd on this site, who grew up in a digital world, naturally knows little of it. But someone is buying cut-sheet color paper; it continues being sold. There could be a fair number of older darkroom workers out there who have done it for years and still do it, who don't post questions about it because they have mastered it (since it is very easy) and don't need to, or perhaps aren't even members, or active members, of this site.

 

[markjwyatt]

...some imagine that Velvia wasn't created to lie, ...

What about Velveeta? Is that stuff actually cheese?