# Why does the 6D mkii Zoom in when shooting HDR?



## daphins (Jul 25, 2017)

Hey! I upgraded from a 60D to the 6D mkii. I've never shot in camera HDR before, and I noticed that the HDR images are slightly more zoomed in than the standard images (shot from s tripod). Why is this? My best guess is that it anticipates the overlay images bring slightly different so it has a standard crop from the edges to compensate? Is this normal?


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## Mikehit (Jul 25, 2017)

If it was handheld, then it may be the camera moved very slightly between shots and the in-camera software aligned the frames and cropped any ragged edges.


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## daphins (Jul 25, 2017)

Mikehit said:


> If it was handheld, then it may be the camera moved very slightly between shots and the in-camera software aligned the frames and cropped any ragged edges.



It's not. I was playing with tripod and long exposures last night. I'll try to upload some samples this evening, but every HDR photo was cropped tighter than standard photos.


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## Khalai (Jul 25, 2017)

daphins said:


> Mikehit said:
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> 
> > If it was handheld, then it may be the camera moved very slightly between shots and the in-camera software aligned the frames and cropped any ragged edges.
> ...



Anything moving in the photos? Perhaps even stars with very long exposures? Something could really confuse aligning algorhytm...


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## Mikehit (Jul 25, 2017)

I googled 'Canon in-camera HDR crop' and it seems it is not just the 6D2:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53337230

https://snapshot.canon-asia.com/article/en/exploring-the-hdr-mode-of-eos-5d-mark-iii

It seems to be a result of Auto-align. If you turn that off maybe it will not crop the image.


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## Kit Lens Jockey (Jul 25, 2017)

Yes, in my experience with HDR in Canon cameras, if you have auto-align on, it will always trim off a little on the edges, in order to allow it to do its auto-aligning thing. Doesn't matter if the camera was actually moving or not. You can set it to on or off. So if you have the camera steady on a tripod, just turn it off, should not crop the photos any more.


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## Khalai (Jul 25, 2017)

Or just forget in-camera HDR JPEG only altogether, bracket a couple of RAW files and HDR merge manually back home


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Aug 1, 2017)

Khalai said:


> Or just forget in-camera HDR JPEG only altogether, bracket a couple of RAW files and HDR merge manually back home



Its a entry level camera, and most users will use those in camera features. Nothing wrong with that. Most of us here use raw and process separately, but the world is changing, people want to and expect the ability to upload and post photos in real time. 

I've been around long enough to remember the discussions when Single Lens Reflex (SLR) film cameras came out. There were lots of naysayers, but they pushed out the rangefinders almost over night. Same thing when autofocus came along. Now, its upload immediately to social web sites, and that's what is needed to attract a new generation of camera buyers. Rejoice, they are keeping the camera manufacturing business alive so us old timers can keep doing it the "RIGHT WAY??"


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## daphins (Aug 1, 2017)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Khalai said:
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> 
> > Or just forget in-camera HDR JPEG only altogether, bracket a couple of RAW files and HDR merge manually back home
> ...



i'll actually be doing his above workflow. Hadn't pulled HDR's off the camera yet, so i didn't know they were JPEG's (which makes sense).

Is there a way to identify photo graphs as being part of a series as we take them, so I know which ones to compile as an HDR in post-production?


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## BeenThere (Aug 1, 2017)

daphins said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
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> > Khalai said:
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Put your hand in front of the lens between series and shoot a separator frame to easily identify the series in post.


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## scyrene (Aug 1, 2017)

daphins said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
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> > Khalai said:
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You'll have a group of three raw shots and a jpeg, with consecutive file names, though the order may vary; but you'll see one bright, one normal, one dark, and one jpeg, and that's your batch. It's fairly straightforward to parse them once you've found the first group.

FWIW in-camera HDR output is pretty poor in my experience (usually overcooked, although it's a matter of taste), and of course as the output is jpeg you have much less processing latitutde than if you blend them in software, but it's a quick way of shooting bracketed raws which can be aligned and blended later; I tend to delete the camera-produced jpeg once I've been through them all.


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## Don Haines (Aug 1, 2017)

daphins said:


> Is there a way to identify photo graphs as being part of a series as we take them, so I know which ones to compile as an HDR in post-production?



My workflow has been to take an obvious nonsense picture to mark the start of a sequence and then snap the three bracketed shots. That way, when looking at the files in lightroom I see a throwaway picture (usually my hand), then the three pictures.... middle, dark, and light.....


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## Khalai (Aug 1, 2017)

Don Haines said:


> daphins said:
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> 
> > Is there a way to identify photo graphs as being part of a series as we take them, so I know which ones to compile as an HDR in post-production?
> ...



I've always hated that order and I'm glad that you can use C.Fn to change that to "more logical" order of darker, middle and lighter exposure. And no, I do not suffer from OCD


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## Mikehit (Aug 1, 2017)

Khalai said:


> I've always hated that order and I'm glad that you can use C.Fn to change that to "more logical" order of darker, middle and lighter exposure. And no, I do not suffer from OCD



Me too. It's like setting 'shoot without card' as default.


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## daphins (Aug 2, 2017)

scyrene said:


> daphins said:
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> > Mt Spokane Photography said:
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So noob question. If I'm shooting RAW and shoot an HDR it will shoot 3 RAW's and a jpeg. When people complain about the HDR performance of the 6D, are they complaining about the jpeg produced from the 6D, or the quality of the RAW's?

Following on that, if I were to manually bracket the RAW's and compile as an HDR image later, would that solve the "poor HDR" performance of the 6D?


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## scyrene (Aug 2, 2017)

daphins said:


> scyrene said:
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> > daphins said:
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I've only used the HDR function on the 5D3 and 5Ds but I assume it's the same for all current bodies? The output is jpeg.

Combining in software is always going to produce a better result*, but it takes longer, of course.

*The in-camera HDR function has a few options, and I haven't tried them all, but all the ones I've tried have produced similarly poor output jpegs *to my eyes*.


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