High Dynamic Range imaging, better known as HDR, is a great way to make your digital photos look awesome. HDR imaging uses multiple pictures with different exposure settings and combines them with Tone Mapping to make awesome pictures. Follow this How To to create your own HDR image with your Nseries phones.

Normally when you take pictures of subjects lots of light contrasted with lots of darkness, your camera will try to balance everything and you end up with an average picture. With HDR imaging, everything in your picture jumps out with vivid color. Check out the HDR wikipedia entry for more info.

Sample Photos

Here is an example of a regular picture you might get with auto mode. Notice most of the good color is in the middle.
EX0

In this shot, the exposure was changed to -2. Now you have more color in the trees, but the sky is washed out.
EX-2

In this shot, the exposure was changed to +2. Details in the sky are well captured, while the trees are almost blacked out.
EX+2

With HDR, we can combine these pictures and use tone mapping to get results like this.

I will show you how to pull off such pictures with an Nseries phone. First you need to make sure your phone has exposure and ISO settings. Most of the Nseries phones have these settings. Even the Nokia N76 and N81 have these settings, despite not having the auto focus feature found in higher end models like the Nokia N78 or Nokia N95.

Equipment

You need equipment beyond your camera phone. A tripod and keyboard are necessary so that your images have as little change as possible. The tripod keeps your camera in one place. The keyboard prevents you from touching your phone and causing any disturbances.

Let’s talk tripods. You can get the Nokia Tripod DT-22. It costs about $30 and looks great with the N93 or N95 8GB. Alternatively, you can get a Sunpak Versipod off Amazon for about $15. A great thing about the Sunpak tripod is that you can twist off the head and attach it to a full sized tripod or the very flexible Gorillapod.

Nokia N82 connected to the Nokia DT-22 and Gorillapod.

The next piece of equipment you will need is a bluetooth keyboard. The key to HDR photos is to keep your camera steady. With a regular camera, you would need a cable release attachment to take pictures without touching the camera. Nokia camera phones can duplicate this functionality with a bluetooth keyboard. You can operate the camera menu’s without touching your phone, keeping your phone very steady. The Nokia SU-8W or Think Outside Stowaway Keyboard are recommended. Check out this review round up at MobileBurn to help you make a choice.

Now that you have your equipment, let’s take some pictures! Be sure that there are no moving objects in your scene. Be careful of clouds, they can move fast. Trees and water can cause problems if there’s too much wind.

Steps

1. First set up your phone with your tripod.
2. Next, activate the camera.
3. Adjust your phone to set up your shot. (This should be the last time you touch the phone)
4. For the rest of this walkthrough, you will be using your keyboard,
5. Go into scene modes and select Landscape.
6. Next, go down the menu and set the white balance accordingly. Typically, you’ll be using sunny or cloudy.
7. Set the ISO speed to low.
8. Find the exposure settings marked by Set the Exposure compensation to +2.
9. Go up the menu to Self timer. Set the timer to 10 seconds.
10. Activate the timer.
11. You will now have you first shot. Now press back.
12. Now set the Exposure compensation to 0 and take another picture using the Self timer. You can use 2 seconds for the timer this time.
13. Next, take a third picture with the Exposure compensation set to -2.
14. Now you’re done with your shot.
15. After you have finished taking pictures, upload them to your computer.

You can get better results if you add more exposures. In this walkthrough, we used 3 exposures with 2EV spacing. Try using 5 exposures with 1EV spacing for better images.

Software

The last thing you need for HDR photography is computer software. You can get Adobe Photoshop, but that is really expensive as well as complicated. There’s a great walkthrough here creating HDR images with Photoshop.

I recommend getting Photomatix from HDRsoft. It costs $99 and has a great tutorial on how to make HDR images. There’s an excellent tutorial on how to use Photmatix here

There are also plenty of free HDR software online you can search for, but your results may vary.