How to Take High Dynamic Range Photographs

Have you ever seen those hyper-real and ultra-contrasty photos and wondered how they're done? A normal digital camera sensor cannot capture all the detail in a scene -- some parts will usually end up over-exposed (which will lose, for example, cloud detail), or some parts might be under-exposed -- i.e. it has a low dynamic range. However, by taking three different shots, merging them (into a high dynamic range image), then employing some digital trickery to reduce the dynamic range without noticeably losing detail (called tone mapping), you can bring out all the details in a scene. Here's how.