The Lazy Photographer: Exposing for Single-Shot HDR (Sort Of)

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Cafe with a View

Wedding-Venue Rokusisui (六絲水), Kyoto Japan

Photos in yesterday's “Heian Shrine Gate From a New Perspective” were taken during an open
house at a new wedding-venue business. The fifth-floor terrace from where I took those photos
is off a small cafe where wedding guests can wait for the
events to begin.

The cafe was richly lit with shade streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows
that made up two walls, but it was much darker than the outside, so the
wide dynamic range (wide range between shadows and brights) made for a fun
challenge.

To create the photo above, I overexposed for the outside and then “slightly” adjusted things in Lightroom (where in this case “sightly” means “a lot”. The result above is actually not too bad, I think. At least it doesn't have too much of an HDR fakeish smell
despite the rather extreme adjustments made in Lightroom.

For reference, here's the original pre-“slightly” photo that the above was derived from:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/200 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Slightly Overexposed for the Outside

original

As you can see, quite of bit of detail and richness can be extracted from the shadows.

I also tried exposing for the dark inside, which I knew would turn the outside into a blinding wash of white:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/50 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Different Shot, Exposed for the Inside

original

The blinding nature of the outside can make for an artsy kind of view, and with a little work this could be made a nice shot.
But a “natural” view couldn't be created from it the way it was created from the initial shot because blown highlights like this are simply gone and can't be recovered.
Here's the best I could come up with:

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/50 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Not Worth The Effort

best try at “fixing” the “Exposed for the Inside” shot

The first shot of the cafe shown above used an exposure that was slightly overexposed for the outside... the overexposure allowed the dark inside
to record a few extra photons, but at the same time the slightness of that overexposure kept it from blowing out the outside view, so detail could be recovered.
This brings to mind two old posts about exposure recoverability:

Overexposure and Underexposure, and the Compensation Thereof
Why I Shoot Raw: Recovering From Disasters

The lessons from both are twofold: 1) you can recover more from
too-dark shadows than from too-bright highlights, and 2) shoot raw
rather than jpeg.

As one more set of data points, here's a photo with proper exposure for the outside, and its “natural” version after adjustments in Lightroom...

Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Properly Exposed for the Outside

the outside is fine, but the inside is way too dark








Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 100 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Properly Exposed for the Outside

adjusted, but a bit too HDRish for my tastes

Finally, it's interesting to compare these various views (as hastily and
unprofessionally made as they are) with a CGI version created by the
business last summer.

The Company's CGI View

as hosted on the Rokusisui (六絲水) web site

I think it's nicely done. They made it long before the new building
actually existed, so the inside is all computer generated. I saw blueprints for the new building early last year
so I know they had an idea of how it would look,
but it's amazing to me how much detail of the interior was planned ahead
and entered into a computer with enough precision to generate a reasonably-accurate representation of what the view
would eventually look like. I suppose it's
standard for the industry, but as an outsider who knows nothing about the
industry, I guess I'm just amazed.