What exactly is HDR? You might have heard it mentioned as a feature on your smartphone or as something built-in to your mirrorless of stills camera.

Well it stands for high dynamic range. But what is dynamic range and why does it need to be high? Dynamic range in photographic terms is the difference between the light and dark areas of a picture. In real life our eyes can see the detail in a dark area and bright area, assuming it is not too dark or too bright. However, cameras and smartphones are not that good at differentiating between these areas, so sometimes you can’t see the areas in the darks parts of the photo or the bright areas might be blown out and can’t see anything there.

So how do smartphones and cameras get around this. Well they take more than one photo at different exposures and then join them together. It is usually three photos but can be more or even just two.

This increases the dynamic range, the difference between the light and dark areas so it is called high dynamic range.

One photo is normal exposure where the dark and light areas are hard to see.

Another is overexposed so the dark areas are now more visible showing the detail.

Then one more underexposed getting the details in the bright areas such as the sky, now allowing you to see the details in the clouds.

The camera or smartphone merges them into one image.

In a smartphone you might not know this has happened. In your camera you switch it on. In my camera and I’m sure many others it saves all three images as well as creates the merged version. However, I find that if I take those three images and put them into Lightroom I can get even better results.

Here is what I do.