As great as cameras are today, they all seem to have one problem. They're not as good as the human eye. Your eyes can distinguish between shadows and highlights very easily. However, most times when you take a photo the camera tries to expose the photo based on the available light. If you have two extremes such as a very bright sky and and person standing under a shade tree, the camera is going to choose one or the other to expose for. This also happens with people. Say you have a person of color, but they're wearing a bright white suit. The camera makes a guess between the two to expose for. So either the person's face looks great, but the suit is totally blown out or the the suit looks fine, but the face is too dark. HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is all the rage today with the pros. Pro shooters are shooting landscapes and other subjects with their DSLRs and shooting in bracketed exposure mode to produce 3 or more shots of the the same scene at 3 or more different exposures. Then they use software to blend the 3 or more images together into one composite keeping the detail between the range of exposures.
You can do HDR with your iPhone photos too
The iPhone seems to even have a harder time distinguishing between the two extremes. Now that's no longer an issue thanks to Apps like Pro HDR. Pro HDR lets you take two photos with your iPhone camera (or choose from your library) and it walks you through the process as you take the photos of exposing for the highlights and shadows by simply tapping on the screen in the light and dark areas. Then it automatically aligns the two shots and blends them together producing an HDR image. I was amazed by the results in my testing.
It can be challenging
Although this App works exactly as advertised, the challenge you will face is more about keeping the iPhone steady than it is using the App. In order to create an HDR image using this App you'll need to take two photos of the exact same thing and taping the screen at least once before snapping each shot. The App will do the best it can to align the two images, but if they are way off because you moved, then you may have to do it over. Luckily there is a tripod mount for the iPhone that I reviewed yesterday here.
Taking the Shots first
One advantage to this App is that it can use shots from your Library. At first I didn't think this feature would be useful until I realized that you could take two shots in rapid succession first with an App that does "burst" mode (Gorillacam does this). However, keep in mind that it's still looking for two shots in which one has properly exposed highlights and the other has properly exposed shadows. So if both shots are exactly the same, then you probably won't get great results. You can also use this if you've loaded your Library with shots taken from your DSLR. Again, you're probably not too likely to do this since you can use desktop software to do HDR.
The Bottom Line
This App solves a common problem with the iPhone camera and does it in an easy to use interface. Definitely worth the price of admission if you're iPhone is your main or often used camera.
Pro HDR
Pro HDR allows you to take two photos and blend them together to achieve a higher dynamic range so that you no longer have to choose between blown out highlights and a very dark foreground.
- eyeApps
- Get on App Store
- $1.99
All info was collected on 23rd March, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
How do you get an iPhone to take two shots with different exposures?
You can’t without using a 3rd party app.
The Tap-to-Focus feature of the iPhone 3GS spot meters on the area you tap. This allows you to take photos of the same subject with different exposures. No 3rd party app is needed.
So what 3rd party app lets you take the two shots with different exposure? The Gorillacam app supports a 3 shot burst. I would think the suggestion would be Perfect Shot. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/perfect-shot/id349607990?mt=8
Let me clarify. This App (Pro HDR) WILL take the two shots at multiple exposures that you need to create your HDR image. There is nothing else you need. My comment in the post was more about keeping the iPhone steady while you take the shots and that it may be better IF you had an App that could just take the two exposures quickly in succession without user interaction. The built-in Camera App won’t do that nor will it allow you vary the exposure. So you would need a 3rd party app to achieve the multiple shots at multiple exposures. Again, this one does it!