Does HDR Make a Difference: Debunk HDR Misconceptions

The term HDR (High Dynamic Range) has become more widespread as a game changer for real estate photography. Does HDR make a difference? The answer is yes. It’s fully capable of providing an authentic representation of the property with realistic and life-like pictures.   

Along with the vogue of HDR in photography, many topics related to HDR bracketing, HDR real estate photography are subject to discussion among the photography communities. Not all of them describe the accurate and appropriate approach for what HDR does and whether it’s worthy of investment. Those misconceptions limit the popularity it deserves.   

In this article, we consult experts to provide a clear view of HDR bracketing misconceptions by going deep into detailed reasons.   

1. Does HDR Make a Difference in Real Estate Photography?  

Absolutely, yes.    

Generally speaking, HDR bracketing is the photo editing process, aiming to keep shadows and highlights balanced as shooting in the optimal lighting condition. In other words, HDR bracketing limits the influence of extrinsic factors on real estate photo quality, especially lighting.    

Imagine photographers have to deal with property shooting in winter with no sunshine. The inappropriate lighting condition caused missing details in photos. Applying the HDR software helps to get details clear, offering better photo looks. So, what does HDR do in terms of property images?    

From the business point of view, HDR images show the property look as it is to human eyes. Definitely, real estate photography plays a critical role in supporting agents in performing their job. The more stunning photos, the better agents perform. It catches the eye and attention of buyers in browsing for listed properties.   

An exterior HDR photo enhanced by Esoft 

In the case of exterior real estate shooting, capturing the sky and the ground in relative darkness is indeed a challenge for even experienced photographers. Some camera sensors induce unrealistic lighting in the shooting photo. HDR keeps the light closer to the actual look and secures the property's beauty.   

For interior shooting, the indoor lighting makes some pieces of color merge, reducing the room’s attraction. HDR bracket describes the photo depth by making the difference in color and shade more clearly.  

Producing HDR images requires bracketing a series of photos, capturing the same scene at different exposures. Commonly, photographers need 5 ambient exposures to blend into one HDR photo. The set of images in a wide range of degrees of luminosity is called the bracketed photo set

The bracketed set will be blended into one photo using the proper photo editing technique. This final result or HDR image is expected to show object details in perfect lighting and exposure. 

2. Typical Misconceptions around HDR Bracketing  

Although HDR photography benefits are undeniable, it still has remaining misperceptions spreading elsewhere.    

Myth #1 - HDR is more time-consuming for your business  

Many photographers argue that the HDR image process takes significantly longer than necessary. From shooting to post-production, you need 5 ambient exposures and put them for the bracketing process. That takes a long time, doesn’t it?  

This is a major myth about HDR. Taking 5 exposures can be done automatically in your camera with property setting, resulting in much less time in choosing the perfect exposure as with single exposure. Compared to flash photography, which takes a huge amount of time to set up lighting and that process constantly changes, HDR simply utilizes the existing ambiance lighting without the need for photographers to constantly move.   

In post-production, it does take some time to bracket the files together, but this again can be done automatically (auto-merging) or manually (hand-blending). Certainly, manual merger might take a bit of time, but it’s needed to create optimal quality. Plus, when editing, using presets and actions are massively time-saving. Photo editing services like Esoft invested time and money to develop presets and expertise to save processing time. In developing such presets, photography companies often have a significant influence too as it’s how you make sure the edits align with your preference.  

Myth #2 - HDR bracketing is only used for landscape photography 

Such a wrong statement! Back in the day, people used it for landscape photography, yes. But the technique has been long used in property photography.   

HDR is not only used for exterior but also interior shooting. HDR landscape photography mainly focuses on balancing the sky and the remaining parts. This applies for exterior HDR real estate photography. Meanwhile, interior HDR focuses on retaining the room details in ambience lighting conditions. 

An interior HDR photo enhanced by Esoft 

Myth #3 - There’s no such thing as HDR night photography  

Or in other words, HDR is used only in the daytime for real estate. 

Some believe that you can only shoot HDR bracketing during the day because there’s ambience light. In the night, there’s no contrast between darkness and light so there’s no way to shoot HDR photos. That;s true for landscape photography when you are in a completely dark environment.   

But that’s wrong for real estate. Since HDR utilizes ambiance lighting, when you shoot properties in the night, you can just use all the artificial lighting (ceiling light) available from the property. As HDR bracketing is about blending images in different exposures into one, it opens a new horizon to shoot real estate photos, be it in daytime or nighttime.   

Myth #4 - HDR images look fake  

It’s a concern that real estate HDR photography makes the image look unrealistic. It’s almost an old habit of photographers to overuse contrast and saturation in HDR editing, which results in an animated look of the photos. But that’s their own personal approach. And there was a time in America, real estate agents prefer strong details like that so it has become a movement. But now that people prefer something more natural, more muted, they question the ability to produce such results with HDR photo shooting technique.   

In fact, HDR photography aims to make the image look like what it is in human eyes as we mentioned above. That means HDR bracketing produces images with a more realistic look as much as possible. Being garish or over-processed is the fault of photo editors’ style. Blending exposures into one photo itself creates much flexibility in the editing process.  

Depending on your expectation, you can go with natural HDR or extreme HDR. Diving into the concept, HDR bracketing adjusts the highlight and shadow details, which cannot be captured in a single exposure.  

Myth #5 - Perfect HDR results are all thanks to the use of tripod  

Using a tripod provides more stability in shooting to the HDR bracketing. Indeed, it guarantees the still framed images for you to bracket together. However, the term bracketing means blending multiple photos of the exact same scene and using tripods in some cases cannot guarantee precisely an identical screen.  

If you shoot HDR photos through the window where the tree moves due to the wind outside, there’s no stillness in the photo.  Moving objects in different exposure images might cause ghosting in the final composite, which is the condition that some elements are different between those bracketed photos.  

If that happens, the tripod itself cannot provide the optimal result. That’s when you need specialised HDR software and HDR photo editor to fix the ghosting problems instead of using tripods only.    

Here at Esoft, our editors specialize in correcting those ghosting issues, balancing exposures, and ensuring your HDR photos look clean, balanced and natural. Instead of spending hours fixing these flaws yourself, you can trust our team to deliver realistic results that keep every property of yours looking its best. 
 

>> Explore Esoft’s photo enhancement solution << 

Myth #6 - 3 exposures is enough for the game 

This misconception raises concern about the difficulty and time-consuming of applying HDR bracketing. Some believe taking more than 3 exposures is time-consuming for photographers since many HDR software solutions do not need that many. Additionally, you can find some other sources suggesting shooting 3 exposures is enough.   

The point is that using only 3 doesn’t provide flexibility and rich data for editing. That’s why expert photographers and editors agree that 5 ambient exposures shooting is a good fit for quality HDR images. The setting of Exposure Value (EV) should have the following values: -4, -2, 0, +2, +4.   

Myth #7 - HDR bracketing is so tough  

Blending work is a scary thing to many photographers but you need to master the work of blending. Don’t let the new concept scare and dictate your production approach. Actually, HDR is pretty simple that photographers can accessibly approach.  

• Shooting: You need a proper camera to take a set of photos in different exposures. Consider auto bracketing shooting instead of manually pressing the shoot button 5 times to get 5 exposures.  

• Equipment: Using a tripod is recommended to keep stability.   

• Editing: Use HDR software or partner with editing services like Esoft to merge and create the final HDR image. 

  
  

3. Final Words 

So, does HDR make a difference? Absolutely — as long as it’s done with care. At the end of the day, HDR isn’t complicated, and it’s not the “time sink” or “fake-looking trick” some make it out to be. When done right, it’s simply a tool to make your property photos look more natural, more balanced, and more appealing to buyers. And if you’d rather skip the trial-and-error, our team at Esoft is here to deliver HDR images that check every box: clean, consistent, and market-ready. 

| Talk with our experts today at sales.vn@esoft.com to get your HDR photos done professionally!