Shooting HDR with Canon 7D

HDR or High Dynamic Range photographs look positively cool and if you have a Canon 7D DSLR you probably want to know how to do it. After googling I found an excellent little topic over on DPReview where GM1974 posts how to do it. However, since the information is a bit all over the net I thought I’d create a straight forward “how-to” post about shooting HDR images with your 7D. So read on to find out how to do it.

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Things you need:

- Canon 7D DSLR
- Photomatix Pro (Mac, PC, incl. plug-in for Aperture and Lightroom)
- A computer (Win/Mac)
- A suitable subject or scene to photograph

Photomatix Pro is a nice little gem that makes creating HDR images a breeze. There’s free trial available and you can get 15% off the purchase price thanks to Barleme Design. Please visit their post about HDR to get the coupon code!

With the elementary notes out of the way, let’s get shooting HDR with your 7D:

Set 7D to M (manual shooting mode) or set this to AV for a consistent depth-of-field (thanks to Dave for the tip).

Go to the Menu by pressing the Menu button and navigate to Custom Functions.

Select the C.Fn1 Exposure entry and move the big wheel until you hit 5. Then press enter and scroll to the -,0,+ entry. Press enter again and exit the menu.

Set 7D to your preferred ISO (or auto)

Press the Q button and use the cursor stick to select exposure/AEB setting. Use the small wheel on the top right of the camera to spread the little bars out until they read -2 and +2. Press enter (big wheel button).

Press the Q button and select the shooting mode to High Speed Continuous.

Take aim of the scene you want to photograph and press down the shutter button and keep it pressed for a second! If all goes well you will hear your 7D take three images in rapid succession.

That concludes the 7D settings for shooting HDR images. You should now have three photos of the same scene with three separate exposure settings on your CF card!

Take those files and load them into Photomatix, which will then stitch them together into a single image for you. Play around with the settings to your hearts content and don’t forget to read the excellent tutorial on HDR over on Bartleme.at.

Here are two I prepared earlier:

I hope you found this little tutorial helpful. Have fun and don’t forget to share your images on the HDR Flickr Group.

Banner copyright © by Bartleme.at

Apologies for the rather dodgy looking photos of the 7D. I only have one DSLR and that was having pictures taken of itself, so the iPhone 3GS had to stand-in.

Photos of 7D and nature by Axel Segebrecht.