Yesterday I drove along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and stopped at a few locations to capture some winter lakeside scenes with HDR2 (high dynamic range). There was a good amount of snow and ice along the shore of the lake, coupled with some very harsh sunlight. So, I decided to do some test images using my E-M1X’s HDR2 technology.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

As is my standard practice, all of my images were captured handheld. My first stop was at the park at Forty Mile Creek where I spent about 10 minutes grabbing some quick compositions.

I looked for some mixed lighting, as well as some situations where I’d have to deal with a lot of contrast in terms of  snow/ice mixed with dark shade.

For example, the tree trunks on the right hand side of the above photograph were in very deep shade. Through the use of HDR2 I had a lot of latitude in post, and was able to make the necessary adjustments very quickly and easily.

I moved over to the lakeside pergola to compose a few images… the first of which was to illustrate the structure and the harsh lighting.

As you can imagine the shade on the inside of the pergola’s roof was very dark.  I lifted the shadows in post more than was necessary with this image… simply to illustrate the amount of dynamic range latitude that was available in the shadow areas when using HDR2.

I wasn’t quite as aggressive in post lifting the shadows in the above composition. I found using the DxO Smart Lighting Spot Weighted tool very helpful when processing the RAW files for the HDR2 images featured in this article.

Before leaving Forty Mile Creek park I grabbed a quick image of the cement pier, while I was standing inside the pergola.

Then, I captured another perspective of the bench illustrated in the second photograph featured in this article.

My final image at Forty Mile Creek park overlooked the small bay which was covered in ice and snow. Using matrix metering for this scene did cause the tree trunk on the left hand side to go quite dark. The DxO Smart Lighting Spot Weighted tool, along with a Pro Contrast adjustment in the Nik Suite, were used for this image and with some of the other ones featured in this article.

After leaving the Forty Mile Creek park, I headed off to Charles Daley Park in Jordan to capture a few additional images. My first photograph was captured while standing in a pergola adjacent to the parking lot. When processing this image I lightened the shadows just enough to make some of the cross braces somewhat visible.

I took a quick hike down to the shore line and composed a few additional photographs. When using HDR2 technology the camera takes 4 separate images at varying exposures, then combines them in camera. I don’t find the corresponding out-of-camera jpegs very usable as they are a bit too ‘thin’ for my liking.

On the other hand, I found the HDR2 RAW files delivered a lot of dynamic range latitude. They were very easy to work with in post, and I was able to process them quite quickly. As mentioned earlier, the DxO Smart Lighting Spot Weighted tool can be used to very good effect with these files.

I had one final location to visit that day,… so I only spent about 5 minutes at Charles Daley Park… then headed off to the Grande Hermine replica vessel at Jordan Harbour Marina.

After arriving at Jordan Harbour Marina I composed a couple of quick landscape images, then hiked over to the Grande Hermine replica vessel.

I completed my 4 minute visit to Jordan Harbour with a couple of images of the vessel.

The HDR2 technology resident in my E-M1X is yet another tool that owners of selected Olympus and OM Systems cameras can use in specific situations. In this case, when high dynamic range is desired when shooting handheld. Since four images, utilizing a range of exposures, are combined in camera with HDR2 technology, it would not be advisable to use this feature under windy conditions.

Individual photographers will need to decide for themselves whether using HDR2 technology will meet their specific needs. Some photographers will no doubt prefer to shoot multiple images tripod assisted, and then manually combine the RAW files in post.

My shooting style is more attuned to using HDR2 technology handheld so I can take advantage of the files being combined in-camera . I’m now sufficiently comfortable shooting with HDR2, and adapting my post processing approach when working with these files, that I won’t hesitate to use HDR2 as opportunities present themselves.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear and technology noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW  files using my standard process. This is the 1,350 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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