how do you make a hdr picture?

Answer 1

If you purchace a Nikon or Canon DSLR (digital single lens reflex), you can capture images in raw format and with a Nikon D200 for example, you get raw images with a dynamic range of 14 stops but can be pushed more if you really know what you're doing. Really, all you need is 11 - 12 stops at the most because that's a huge range. Shooting with a camera that doesnt produce raw images, you are stuck with jpg's and they only have about 8 stops dynamic range that are good enough to use. You can push more range out of them but the results will be pretty crappy. Having said that, if the high contrast scene you are capturing is not moving (ie a landscape rather than a moving vehicle or running tiger), you can take two exposures - one exposed for highlights and one exposed for shadows and then blend them together using photoshop. Here is a website that will help you with that
http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/DynamicRanger.html

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