"Room with a View" - HDR magic

Ain't technology wonderful? The things you can do with pixels these days!

The challenge: you want to photograph a room with a view, i.e. the room AND the view. You don't want to spend three hours setting up lights (or you don't have any lights with you). It's bright sunshine outside and dim inside. If you expose for the view, the room is way too dark. If you expose for the room, the view burns out to paper white.

Answer? The magic of High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. Photoshop CS3 includes a greatly improved version of this priceless toy, but it's also available elsewhere - just Google for "HDR".

Here's how it works: you stick the camera on a tripod and lock it down. You meter for the average in the scene and bracket 2 stops up and 2 stops down (5 shots in all - might need some experimentation). Back home you twiddle a few knobs and push a few buttons in Photoshop and... presto!

Here's five shots, none of which is "right" for the room AND the view:


And here's the result:


Magic, innit?