Since I just posted an article on what HDR is and the link to how it’s done, I thought it’d be a good addition to let you know how to set up your camera.

Every camera that supports different exposures can take photos which can be merged into HDR-pictures on the computer. Generally, you’d take a normally exposed photo (0), a slightly underexposed photo (-2) and a slightly overexposed photo (+2) to achieve a good HDR-image result. This can easily be altered manually, but why the effort? The settings for HDR photos with a Canon EOS 500D (for example) are very straight forward. A feature called AE Bracketing will increase the likelihood of getting the exact same photo. This is vital to get a good result. Having to set the exposures manually may end up in photos that vary: clouds that moved on in between shots, for example. Some even suggest a remote control to decrease the chance of accidentally moving the tripod. AE Bracketing helps you very easily to take three shots with different preset exposures, allowing to get photos that were taken in a short amount of time. If you would like to make a HDR-image with more than three photos though, you’re on your own again.

Page 86 of the user manual will help you with the settings.

AE Bracketing on a Canon EOS 500D: