Category Archives: Photography

Panasonic has announced the Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12-35mm F2.8 ASPH. Power O.I.S. as the replacement for the Lumix G X VARIO 12-35 mm F2.8 II ASPH. According to the manufacturer, it is one of Panasonic’s highest quality Lumix G Micro Four Thirds lenses and it has been designed to meet the tough optical standards set by Leica.

The new Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12-35mm F2.8 ASPH. Power O.I.S. weighs just 306g but is splash- and dust-resistant, and capable of operating at temperatures down to -10°C.

Panasonic has constructed the lens from fourteen elements arranged in nine groups with four aspherical elements, one UED (Ultra Extra-Low Dispersion) element and one UHR (Ultra High Refractive Index) element. The UHR element is said to have an updated design with higher transmittance and more natural colour reproduction.

Panasonic has also applied its Nano Surface Coating to reduce reflections. This coating works with a new light-shielding component to minimise ghosting and flare.

There’s also a 7-blade diaphragm, with a circular aperture for smooth, attractive bokeh.

The new lens features a shorter minimum focusing distance than its predecessor, just 0.15m at the widest point, and a larger magnification ratio of 0.21x at the 17mm point.

It also has a new mechanism to suppress focus breathing and a micro-step aperture control for smooth exposure adjustment while shooting video. The focusing is also said to be silent. All of this, plus the stabilisation system, makes the new lens well-suited to video as well as stills photography.

Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12-35mm F2.8 ASPH. Power O.I.S. price and availability

The Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12-35mm F2.8 ASPH. Power O.I.S. will be available from February 2023 priced at £879.

Taking a photo can be achieved by the push of a button but all the other finer details that makes a good picture was an educational lesson for aspiring Bulldogs photographers in the off-season.

Canterbury players Jake Averillo, Max King, Declan Casey and Jayden Okunbor were among those who got an up-close look at the work of NRL award-winning chief photographer Grant ‘Chucky’ Trouville when he paid the club a visit in the off-season.

Trouville was on deck at Belmore to teach several of the club’s top 30 players the trips and tricks in a possible career path post rugby league.

The visit, organised by the Bulldogs education department, went so well that in conjunction with the Elite Athlete Business School, the course will now be officially added to their offerings for 2023.

“We are very proud to be the first ones to design and deliver this course in conjunction with the Elite Athlete Business School and The Brand Builders,” Bulldogs club career coach Renee Liddy said.

“It was so well received by our players, that it will be great to see this course rolled out to other clubs in the future, so that more players can receive the same education and training that our players did.”

Trouville took the group through a class of skills that included shutter speed, lighting and specific angles. 

There was also hope that the players could been part of the NRL’s Nikon experience during the 2022 Telstra Premiership finals, but both Averillo and King were called into the PM’s XIII side while Casey and Okunbor had NSW Cup commitments.

“I’m passionate about photography, I went overseas and and took my camera. You can look back and know you took that shot,” Averillo said. 

“‘Chucky’ made it a lot more relatable and that was pretty big for us. It was interesting to hear that at different stadiums they have different lighting and settings required.

“It makes me think twice, it’s so much harder than it looks. It’s pretty cool for us being the first to do [a course] and hopefully other clubs can follow.”

For Bulldogs forward King, who is looking towards a career path for life after football, the opportunity to work with Trouville and the EABS 

“I’m not a Picasso art student but can appreciate a good photo,” King said.

“It’s so good for life after footy. When you’re a footballer you’re on this pedestal because you’re on the television every week.

“People talk about having a trade but why not something like this?

“For ‘Chucky’ to put the football world into photography, we didn’t realise how much work goes into it and also how much physical work at games it takes.

“The practical part was more of a mind blow than anything. It showed my appreciation to photographers.

“Even just the basic iPhone settings, with little tips and tricks, it makes a massive difference. My interest in photography now has spiked more.

“It was a lot easier to understand and relate because it had the rugby league component.

As social media also continues to evolve, so too do the players’ own brands with King an avid follower of most NRL clubs and other sporting clubs around the world with a key eye on their digital component. 

“When you retire you have this following but when it’s all over you’re then like well what do I do now?,” King added.

“If you want to have a business after footy, you don’t have to be a social media marketing guru but it’s just the way the world is moving these days.”

Trouville, who has seen a rise in interest around digital media and photography with players during his time at the NRL, was pleased to hear the program was set to be an official course.

“It was awesome to go out to Belmore, see the players and give them a bit of an insight into what we do,” Trouville said.

“Hopefully next year we can get them at a game taking a few snaps and more players at all clubs get involved.

“It’s a great career-path and everyone starts at the same level with photography. The more time you invest the more you learn and better you’re going to be.”

The two things happened simultaneously, learning about activism and learning to make a photograph. – Sunil Gupta

Aperture announced the relaunch of Aperture Ideas—an essential series of books devoted to the finest critical and creative minds exploring key concepts in photography—with the publication of Sunil Gupta’s We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference.

In 2004 the cultural theorist Stuart Hall credited Gupta with being a photographer whose images had changed what was possible to see and desire in a queer, postcolonial world. Yet until now, the formative role that Gupta’s writing has played in his practice has been less widely known. Often working in moments of political pressure and publishing in diverse places––including ephemeral media such as magazines and community newsletters¬¬-—Gupta’s work over the last fifty years speaks to his talent as a prolific, insightful, and witty writer.

Divided into four chronological sections, and introduced by the editor and art historian Theo Gordon, We Were Here charts how Gupta’s concerns have developed over decades and through the course of shifting personal and political circumstances.

In his writing about public gay identities in Montreal and New York in the early 1970s, the furtive silence around homosexuality in Indian cities, the AIDS crisis, the Black Arts Movement, and key figures including Joy Gregory and Robert Mapplethorpe, Gupta foregrounds the power of cultural activism across continents, and illuminates the essential connections between queer migration and self-discovery. Continually questioning given forms of identity, Gupta offers artists and curators multiple strategies of resistance, carving out space for new ways of imagining what it might mean to live, love, and create.

Sunil Gupta (born in New Delhi, 1953) is a photographer, curator, writer, and activist. After migrating to Canada at the age of fifteen, he was educated in photography at the New School, New York, and the Royal College of Art, London. Gupta’s diasporic experience of multiple cultures informs a practice dedicated to themes of race, migration, and queer identity—and his life is a point of departure for photographic projects, born from a desire to see himself and others like him represented in art history. A curator of numerous exhibitions, Gupta has presented his photography internationally and his work is the subject of several monographs, including Christopher Street, 1976 (2018), From Here to Eternity (2020), Lovers: Ten Years On (2020), and London ’82 (2021). He lives and works in London.

 

Aperture Ideas: Artists and Writers on Photography, a series of essay collections devoted to essential voices in the field, includes bestselling titles by Geoff Dyer, Philip Gefter, Vicki Goldberg, Fred Ritchin, and David Levi Strauss.

 

We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference
An Aperture Ideas Book
Selected Writings by Sunil Gupta
¼ × 8 ¼ in. (13.3 × 21 cm)
200 pages
26 duotone images
Paperback
Design by Pacific
ISBN 978-1-59711-528-5
US $29.95 / CDN $41.95 / UK £22.00
Limited-edition print available

Aperture Foundation
548 West 28th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001
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Insta360 has announced that its Insta360 RS 1-Inch 360 camera is now compatible with Matterport Virtual Tours. The new compatibility is available for iOS users now, with the Android version coming soon. The Insta360 RS 1-Inch 360 camera features a high-resolution camera that allows for 6K 360º video capture and 21mp 360 photos. Dual 1-inch CMOS sensors provide high-quality imaging and dynamic range, allowing for detailed shots even in low light and tight spaces. The camera also offers the ability to shoot RAW images and two HDR modes that can be used while shooting in RAW format. One of the standout features of the Insta360 RS 1-Inch 360 is its compact size, making it ultra-portable.

With this new compatibility, Insta360 RS 1-Inch 360 users can harness the power of Matterport to create virtual tours in stunning VR. The camera’s ability to capture high-resolution images and its dual CMOS sensors make it perfect for creating detailed and immersive VR experiences. Its compact size and intuitive app also make it easy to use, even for those who are new to 360-degree photography.

Insta360 is now offering a Virtual Tour Kit for $859.99, which includes the camera, a selfie stick, a lens cap, and a 64GB memory card. This makes it easy for users to get started with their VR tours right away. When it comes to the Matterport subscription, there is a free trial available so that users can try out the application and see what it has to offer. After the free trial, there is a ‘Starter’ subscription available for $9.99 a month.

For more information on the Insta360 RS 1-Inch 360 and its compatibility with Matterport Virtual Tours, visit Insta360’s website.

Settings for night photography or low light images can be one of the trickiest tasks to master in photography.  Shooting pictures in the dark requires you to understand low light photography settings.  But no worries!  I’ve done the work for you.  I’ve researched and written down all the tips and tricks for you to produce stunning pictures after dark and in low light situations.

Before We Talk Low Light Photography Settings

Let’s talk photography tips in general

If you have little to no experience shooting pictures after dark, the first thing you will want to learn is how to use your camera in manual mode.  Using manual mode will help you understand aperture, ISO, and shutter speed, critical information when taking night photos.  Once you know the exposure triangle, you will have a lot of room to learn how to manipulate your settings for night photography.

Manual Mode:  One Tool To Give You Control of Your Camera

More Info:  Learn about image stabilization, camera shake, focus, and motion blur in 3 Simple Reasons Your Photos Are Blurry

Low Light Photography Settings for Beginners

Now that you have practiced mastering manual mode, you can begin to understand how to use your camera settings for night photography.  Taking pictures in the dark doesn’t have to be difficult if you know where to begin.  To get started, check out Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Nighttime Photography, where we talk about basic landscape photography along with photography camera settings.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Nighttime Photography

Settings for Night Photography When Shooting Star Trails

Learning how to take pictures in the dark without a flash can seem impossible.  Of course, it will take some trial and error to get everything working just right, but with the right skill and a starting place for settings, your results can be stunning!  Sky photography is one of my favorites.  You will want to have a wide-angle lens for night sky photos. 

We spend plenty of time at our family cottage in the summer.  Although this area isn’t completely clear of light pollution, it does rank decently on the dark sky map.  www.darksky.org.  I love looking up at the night sky and seeing the many, many stars high up over the water.  Of course, there are a few too many trees for my taste, but they make a nice frame for beautiful star trail photos. 

Check out the low-light photography settings in 5 Simple Steps for Photographing Stars and Star Trails.  With these tips, including info on bulb mode and a longer shutter speed, you’ll be off and running, taking pictures in the dark, including gorgeous star trails of your own!

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5 Simple Steps for Photographing Stars and Star Trails

More Info:  Learn about wide aperture, maximum aperture, and fast lenses in 5 Things Your Camera Won’t Tell You About Aperture Blades and F-Stops

For pictures in the dark of the Milky Way

The Milky Way is amazing, isn’t it!?  She is so mysterious, and just about everyone loves a beautiful image of the milky way in the night sky.  Of course, you must be a bit of a night owl to capture the milky way in pictures in the dark.  Go on my adventure through the dunes with a new friend who taught me all about taking Milky Way photos and other low light photography settings.  Are you starting to see that the camera settings for night photography are all reasonably similar?  It begins with a slow shutter speed and a solid tripod. 

How to take Milky Way Photos and other Events in the Sky

Low Light Photography Settings and Other Prep Work

Everyone loves to have a quick answer!  Can’t I jot down some settings for night photography and be ready to take amazing pictures in the dark?  Of course you can, but don’t underestimate the importance of the other prep work you’ll want to do before heading out the door.  When you want to shoot like a pro, you do a big part of the work before leaving your home or office.  Check out five simple tips for shooting pictures in the dark in Shoot like a pro using the Best Settings for Night Photography.

Shoot like a pro by using the Best Settings for Night Photography

Pictures in the Dark of Stunning Fireworks

One of my earliest experiences trying to take pictures in the dark was at my local Independence Day Celebration.  I tried and tried with my camera on auto mode, and I could not understand why my photos would not turn out.  Once I mastered manual, I was off and running.  Some of my favorite images are of fireworks.  And it’s so easy!  You won’t believe it! Here’s a hint:  can you believe you start at ISO 100?  You can use a lens of any focal length, but you’ll want to make sure you can get back far enough to get the firework trails in your image.

Take a look at some of my best firework images and get the easy formula for capturing them in How to Capture Epic Firework Photos with The Best 6 Tips.  You will even find a free cheat sheet to print out and tuck in your camera bag.

How to Capture Epic Firework Photos With The Best 6 Tips (+ Free Cheat Sheet)

Settings for Night Photography for those with Extra Patience

If you are a regular reader, you know that I live close to Lake Michigan, in Holland, Michigan. We have a gorgeous Lighthouse not far from my home that I love to photograph.  One of my earliest adventures in taking pictures after dark was photographing Big Red. https://veronicajunephotography.com/seven-beautiful-portraits-of-big-red-lighthouse-that-will-inspire-you/ I learned so much from a local photographer who I admire.  He was kind enough that evening to mentor me and teach me some new tricks for night photography.  Enjoy those tricks in An Adventure in Lighthouse Photography.

An Adventure in Lighthouse Photography

A Summary of Night Photography Settings

It may be easy to assume that the most crucial tip for shooting in low light conditions would be to use slower shutter speeds, but you would be missing out on so much more.  Reading through these tips will help you know when to use a higher ISO or a lower ISO, what equipment you need to get excellent results, and how to plan by researching location, times, and what to bring with you.  Remember these five tips when you’re shooting pictures in the dark, and you’ll be ready for the perfect shot (with lots of practice, of course).

1.    Plan and be ready with the correct time and location.

2.    Pack the correct equipment for your nighttime adventure.  Don’t forget safety and sustenance!

3.    Take some notes and understand where you will need to begin with your settings.

4.    Print out any helpful photography tutorials with night photography tips, so you can refer to them while you’re shooting.  Now is an excellent time to remind you to bring a dim or red bulb flashlight.

5.    Have fun!  Be Safe!  I hope you will show off your results in my Facebook Group HERE.

I would love to know how I can improve this blog for my readers. Would you mind taking this short anonymous survey to share your thoughts?

If you liked this article, you’ll probably like these, too!

The post Amazing Low Light Photography Settings To Change The Way You Shoot After Dark appeared first on Veronicajune Photography.

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Vivian slip was born in southern Germany in 1994 and has been studying photojournalism and documentary photography since 2013 Hanover. She is currently in her seventh semester and mainly works on free projects. For the „German Holiday Paradise“ photo project, she rented a place on Playa de Palma in Malle for three weeks. And just watched. For us she answered questions in the interview:

ZEITjUNG.de: You rented a room in Playa de Palma for three weeks for your photo project – why are you so fascinated by the people who fly to Mallorca to see Ballermann?

Vivianrutsch: I’m interested in bizarre places and events and wanted to find out to what extent the clichés in my head correspond to reality. It fascinates me to become part of a microcosm and to dive into a world unknown to me. I wanted to find out which people flock to Ballermann and what motivates them to do so.

 

Why is Mallorca so popular with Germans anyway? After all, you can also party in your hometown.

I perceived the German holiday culture as a large community. At Ballermann, where I primarily stayed, the mood was always boisterous and uninhibited. Anonymity certainly plays an important role here. I think people find a place here that doesn’t exist in their home country. Age and profession are secondary, which is certainly one reason for the fascination that Ballermann exerts on German audiences. Especially for a generation for which there is actually no party culture on this scale in Germany. This exuberance would be unthinkable in Germany, for many, celebrating at Ballermann also means being free – without being judged for it.

 

What bizarre encounters were there during this time? For me, the entire time at Ballermann was a bizarre encounter. A small excerpt from my notebook: „I sit down with my camera on a wall between the beach and the promenade and watch the hustle and bustle. A woman sits next to me, brown perm, gold hoop earrings, and a gold necklace lying on her liver-spotted skin. She begins to smoke, drags heavily on her cigarette, her long red fingernails flash at me, the nail polish is peeling off at the ends. I want to take a picture of her, we start a conversation. I photograph her, with the Black Sea behind her. The lanterns cast yellow light on her brown hair. She says she’s alone, we’re going for a beer together. The room is crowded and loud, people sing along to German hits. Several monitors show a boxing match. Sandra says she loves fights, then she can’t stop staring. She got that from her mother, who put her in front of the television at the age of five and let her watch the heavyweight class. When she was 17, she went to a bar where the boys fought. There she stood in the first row and went home with blood spattered on her heels.

So I’m sitting with Sandra on wooden stools in the Bierkönig, three beers later three men join us. All between 48 and 50, paunchy and graying. They introduce themselves as Hubert, Guido and Winnie. After a short conversation, Sandra and Winnie kiss, although Sandra actually had her eye on the somewhat arrogant Guido in leather pants. We accompany the three of them to the „Rutschbahn“, an oldie disco with a small wooden slide that leads down to the basement. Similar to what you know from coal mines. There is dancing. Hubert sits down with me at the bar. After the seventh beer they buy us, we go home. Sandra still didn’t want to sleep with Winnie, maybe he should have withheld from her the fact that he is married and has two daughters.

Thanks for this interview! You can find Vivian’s photo projects here, her Instagram page here.

   

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Drone manufacturer DJI has announced the DJI Mini 3, a stripped down version of the Mini 3 Pro that loses that drones forward and rear obstacle detection, the company’s ActiveTrack following system and the higher-end video specs of its big brother, but starts at a farily competitive price of just $699.

Like the Mavic 3 Classic DJI launched last month, the Mini 3 is aimed at users who don’t need all the functionality of the company’s premium models. 

DJI Mini 3 features a 12MP (1/1.3-type) CMOS image sensor combined with a 24mm (f1.7) aperture lens. The onboard camera shoots images in RAW/JPEG mode and videos in 4K HDR at 30 fps, compared to 4K 60 fps on the Mini 3 Pro, and videos can be shot in portrait mode with DJI’s True Vertical Shooting mode.

According to DJI, in live feed, a video of 720p can be relayed from a distance of up to 10 kms away. With a wind resistance at up to 10.7 m/s, DJI says the Mini 3 can hover steady and keep a stable image, and standard DJI features like the Return To Home (RTH) mode in event of a signal drop are also included.

The drone weighs just 248gms (which makes it eligible for flying without any registration), and has an estimated flight time of 38 minutes on a single charge of the standard onboard battery. If you want to fly further, the Intelligent Flight Battery Plus accessory takes the total flying time out to a whopping 51 minutes. 

DJI Mini 3 will be available in five different configurations – each one having a different combination of accessories. 

DJI Mini 3 is available for purchase from store.dji.com and authorized retail partners in five configurations. The cheapest form is the DJI Mini 3 (Drone Only), which does not include a remote controller or charger. It will set you back $699. The DJI Mini 3 configuration includes DJI’s RC-N1 Remote Controller. It’s $829, or the same package with the DJI RC controller is $1,019. 

In addition, the DJI Mini 3 Fly More Combo Plus includes the DJI RC-N1 Remote Controller, Shoulder Bag, Two-Way Charging Hub, and two extra Intelligent Flight Batteries Plus. It’s $1,188, and the final offering is the DJI Mini 3 Fly More Combo Plus (DJI RC), which includes the DJI RC Remote Controller, Shoulder Bag, Two-Way Charging Hub, and two extra Intelligent Flight Batteries Plus. Yours for $1,378.

 For more information on all the new features, accessories, and extras, visit dji.com/dji-mini-3.

We’re not able to directly show you what a true HDR image looks like, as it’s difficult to ensure it’s viewable correctly even if you’re using an HDR-capable device. Instead this image shows ACR’s Visualize HDR regions display.

The latest version of Adobe Camera Raw brings a feature which for years we’ve been asking: support for true HDR editing for those with an HDR display. It’s a Mac-only option described as a ‘Technology Preview’ for now, but it brings the ability to create lifelike HDR files from existing Raws as well as the ability to open and edit HDR HEIF files created by Canon and Sony cameras.

It’s distinctly rough around the edges, but it finally offers a way to exploit the capabilities of high dynamic range displays using familiar photographic tools, enabling you to make your photos ‘pop’ like never before.

The infrastructure doesn’t yet exist to reliably share the images, but gaining the ability to view and edit HDR stills gives us a glimpse of a dazzlingly bright future for digital photography.

What type of HDR are we talking about?

Just to be clear, this article is not about trying to tone-map extra dynamic range into the range that can be shown on a standard DR (SDR) display. Instead we’re talking about true HDR, where an image is edited so that it takes advantage of the wider DR (brighter brights and darker darks) of the latest display technologies.

At present, it’s newer TVs that are most likely to have this capability, with HDR being part of the ‘UHD Premium’ standard for 4K TVs. As tends to happen with new technologies, there are a number of standards for HDR and some brands willing to use the name even where it’s not necessarily deserved, but so long as your TV conforms to the pretty widespread HDR10 standard, you can give ACR’s HDR Output feature a try.

How do I use ACR’s HDR Output mode?

The first challenge in using ACR’s new feature is to connect your TV or HDR monitor to your Mac. You’ll need a relatively recent Mac (generally post-2018) and a compatible USB-C to HDMI adapter, and then jump through whatever hoops are required to get your TV to accept an HDR signal (I had to engage ‘Enhanced HDMI’ mode on the compatible inputs, on mine).

If you connect a TV or monitor that Mac OS recognizes as HDR-capable, you should get a checkbox in the Display Settings panel letting you send it a 10-bit HDR signal.

If it’s working, you should get an ‘High Dynamic Range’ checkbox in the Display Settings panel of System Preferences. If you don’t, then there’s a problem with either your HDMI adapter, TV’s settings or HDMI lead.

Once you’ve got your display connected, you need to engage the ‘HDR Output’ option in Adobe Camera Raw’s preferences, then restart the software. Once enabled, you should see an HDR colorspace listed at the bottom of the ACR panel (the software supports HDR variants of sRGB/Rec.709, P3 or Rec.2020), along with a note that it’s working in a 32-bit space.

You should also see a button marked ‘HDR’ at the top right of the edit panel. If you’re working with a sequence of bracketed images and have used the ‘Merge to HDR’ option, the HDR mode should automatically be selected, but for single Raws you’ll need to engage it yourself using the button.

The HDR editing interface

When you hit the HDR button, your oddly flat-looking Raw file should burst back into life, as ACR expands the data to make full use of the HDR space you’re going to be working in.

Note that the histogram at the top right of the panel has suddenly been split in two: the conventional SDR range is on the left and the expanded HDR part of the range extends on to the right. Raws with data you were previously having to pull back into your image with the exposure or highlights sliders will show them rendering without any adjustment.

When you engage HDR mode the SDR portion of the image stays on the left, but the previously clipped highlights expand into the HDR region on the right.

Adobe has broken this expansion up into four stops, and a yellow bar underneath the HDR section of the histogram shows you how much of this your TV/monitor is able to display.

Armed with this knowledge, you can start editing your images using most of the standard ACR editing tools. You’re likely to find an immediate problem with this: if you’re working with a Raw file you exposed for SDR (which you probably did, without even recognizing that you were doing so), then the mid-tones and shadows of your image are likely to look absolutely normal to start with. Most of the flexibility you gain in HDR mode is in the highlights: how bright they can be and how the roll-off is handled.

This essentially leaves you with only the Whites and Highlights sliders to play with, since the ‘Exposure’ slider is likely to already be in about the right place. Personally I found the Curves tool to be the most useful in manipulating the HDR region of the image.

The ‘clipping’ warning indicators in ACR become more sophisticated in HDR mode, with yellow showing the regions that are brighter than an SDR display can show, and red showing the regions too bright for your HDR display to show.

As you start applying various tonal adjustments, there are two preview modes that become very useful. The first is an updated version of the highlight clipping warnings. If you hover or click at the top right of the histogram, you’ll find that all the areas brighter than the SDR range light up yellow and all the areas clipped on your HDR display are indicated in red. This gives you a rough idea of the extent to which you’re utilizing the extra headroom.

The High Dynamic Range tool tab includes a checkbox to indicate the HDR regions of the image.

There’s also a more sophisticated warning display, though. At the bottom of the ‘Basic’ adjustments tab is a High Dynamic Range tool. This includes a ‘Visualize HDR’ checkbox that overlays the HDR regions of the image with different colors, depending on how many stops above the SDR cutoff they are. You can mouse-over the relevant regions of the histogram to highlight just the areas that are 2 stops over, or just the areas that are 3 stops over, for instance.

The ‘Visualize HDR ranges’ feature highlights in cyan, blue, purple and magenta the areas that are 1, 2, 3 and 4 stops, respectively, into the HDR region, letting you see how bright they are.

Below this is a panel that lets you fine-tune the SDR rendering of your file, if you plan to make a more accessible version. These adjustments are somewhat limited in scope (it’s unlikely you’ll be able to make the SDR version look as good as a file directly edited for SDR), but crucially do not alter the appearance of your HDR edit, and mean you don’t necessarily need to make two completely distinct edits of your image.

Is it worth the effort?

As soon as you make basic edits to a couple of files, it becomes clear why the feature currently holds ‘Technology Preview’ status. Some tools, such as the recently-added ‘Color Grading’ wheels, don’t really work in HDR mode yet: the three wheels are supposed to let you individually edit the hue, saturation and brightness of the shadows, midtones or highlights, but these ranges are pinned to the SDR values, meaning the ‘highlights’ wheel only adjusts the upper-mids of an HDR image, with everything brighter than that remaining unaffected. Other tools, such as Curves, gain greater importance but end up collapsing the ‘Basic’ tab (with the HDR tools panel) if you have ACR set to its default behavior. This is the sort of detail Adobe is typically still working on at the preview stage.

I got my image to look like the sun flaring through the trees, rather than looking like a photo of the sun flaring through the trees.

But the results you can get can be dramatic. Even on my LCD-based HDR TV I was able to push the bright regions of my image far beyond the brightness of the midtones, making the scene highlights appear almost as dazzling bright as they had in reality. ‘You can make the highlights brighter’ might not sound like the ‘dazzlingly bright future for photography’ I alluded to at the start of the article, but with a bit of tweaking I got my image to look like the sun flaring through the trees, rather than looking like a photo of the sun flaring through the trees. This added capacity for realism is only likely to increase as higher DR display technologies such as OLED and QD-OLED* gain wider acceptance and become more affordable.

It seems fair to assume that many of the initial teething problems will be resolved as HDR Output moves from ‘Technology Preview’ to fully-fledged feature. The bigger issues perhaps lie outside Adobe’s direct control. There’s Windows support to think about, which means implementing the feature on a wider and less tightly-controlled range of hardware. But the arrival of proper HDR editing tools serves to put pressure on the biggest roadblock to use and acceptance: the challenge of sharing files so that other people can see the images the way you intend them to look.

The HDR future is not here…yet

Armed with HDR capabilities, you’re likely to find yourself looking back through your recent photos, trying to work out which would benefit from highlights that ‘pop’ more than they could when you edited them for SDR. It’s possible to make the bright sunset on the right of this image really glow, without losing highlight saturation and without risking the rest of the image looking flat. Frustratingly, I can’t easily share this with you, even if you have an HDR-capable screen to view it on.

Anyone who’s already tried the Output HDR feature in ACR 15.0 will have found themselves limited to JPEG XL as an output format, ironically just as Google announced it will be removing preliminary support for it from its Chrome Browser. However, v15.1, released today, adds support for Google’s preferred AVIF format, which can only be good for compatibility.

There are other hurdles still to overcome though. The most widespread HDR-capable devices tend to be smartphones and UHD Premium compliant TVs, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll engage their HDR modes even if they encounter HDR content in a compatible browser. We know that several of the larger companies are working together to improve support and consistency, but just having files in a supported format may not be enough to be confident that they’ll render correctly.

As things stand, the arrival of HDR editing in Adobe Camera Raw doesn’t fully open the door to a more realistic photographic future, but it gives it enough of a shove that you can start to see light through the crack.

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*Quantum-dot Organic Light-Emitting Diode (a technology that uses color-shifting materials to deliver red or green light from individual blue OLEDs), a brighter version of OLED technology, not to be confused with QLED, which uses color-shifting materials to help more light from an LED backlight get through an RGB color filter layer.