HDR at Pima Air & Space Museum

Our visit to the Pima Air & Space Museum on Friday produced the usual (for me) dichotomy of feelings: awe and pride for our country’s military prowess and accomplishments, interwoven with a profound sadness that we do not find ways to direct more our formidable ingenuity, resourcefulness and will toward the good of mankind instead of its destruction. Sigh.

The time was enhanced by good friends Terry & Sue Baughman and Jim Zimmerman. Jim further spiced up an already interesting day by sharing many of his experiences as an Air Force mechanic before the start of his farming career, and as a restoration volunteer at this museum since his retirement.

The day also produced lots of photos. I frequently thought of Susi’s dad, Tom, who has taken me to many an air museum throughout the years, which further pushed me to try and get the best images I could. Tom, I hope you enjoy the images in this 02-24 Pima Air Museum album.

Several of these images were produced with HDR photography (i.e., High Dynamic Range, which is done by combining several shots of the same scene to better capture details in both the brightest highlights and darkest shadows). The Lighting tool in the ACDSee Pro 5 software that I use to process images does such a good job of muting overexposure and teasing out shadow detail that I usually do not bother with HDR. However, seeing the aircraft sitting in the brilliant, midday sun prompted me to push the envelope a bit.

Although these photos are somewhat mundane, I think that they do serve to demonstrate the value of HDR. In each case, I took a series of five shots, ranging from underexposed to overexposed, and combined them using the Photomatix Pro software package. Rather than fiddling with its numerous controls, I used Photomatix’s “Natural” defaults, and then finished the processing in ACDSee Pro as usual. I also processed the best shot from each series individually, so I have an interesting side-by-side comparison. Click on the thumbnails below to see for yourself and read my brief comments about the differences that I perceive. For those who may be curious, I’ve also included the five unprocessed images after the last example. Although the improvement with HDR is rather subtle in these images, it’s enough to convince me to practice it some more in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned and find out how I do!

Landing Gear – HDR