Remember my failure to take images of a gorgeous sunset? Well, I may be stupid, but I’m not stupid all the time 🙂
On the next day the evening sky before sunset was looking exactly like the day before, only this time I was prepared - and so was my camera. The OM-D E-M1 has a dedicated button for switching to HDR mode. In that mode the camera takes a fast, bracketed burst and then automatically merges the images. As a result you get just one JPEG and one RAW, that’s it.
I’m not exactly sure whether the RAW file is really the result of a merge, or if that is only true for the JPEG, but I suppose it is. Sure, the E-M1 has plenty of dynamic range, but even after applying an extreme curve I can get good detail out of the darkest shadow, much better than from any other camera so far. Thus, yes, I think the RAW is merged as well. It looks a bit different from the JPEG, but that seems to be mostly due to the defaults of Lightroom.
OK: it’s not. The manual says: “In the case of HDR1 and HDR2, the HDR-processed image will be saved as a JPEG file. When the image quality mode is set to [RAW], the image is recorded in RAW+JPEG. The only image recorded in RAW is the image with suitable exposure.”. Seems like dynamic range is that good 🙂
The Song of the Day is again “It’s A Fire” from the 1994 Portishead album “Dummy”. Hear it on YouTube.