I have accumulated a great deal of knowledge and software related to HDR over the last few years and am making the work available here. Everything is contingent on permissions, of course, and most if not all are for personal or academic use only.

Most of what is here is in the form of Matlab scripts. All that I considered useful, were compiled into executables with Matlab 5. There are some EXR-HDR conversion utilities derived from the code in the EXRTools distribution (Copyright (C) 2003 Billy Biggs). ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) produces and makes available some utilities for use with their OpenEXR distribution, most useful is the 'exrdisplay' program. Drag and Drop an EXR image onto the exec and the image will be displayed on the monitor. Here is a list of Matlab scripts for assembling and compressing HDR images.

Film scanning. Growing up, one of the memories with which I characterize my childhood, are the dozens of images my father took and kept. Some of the images go back to the late 1930's and are of he and relatives, friends, or family in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. Some are from WWII. Many were lost in the later years of his life when, as with so many, he suffered premature senility and Alzheimer's before he died.
I'm sure many "boomers" like me have inherited a collection, not just of prints, but of negative film as well. My work developed a method to digitize the negatives using commonly available equipment. Hopefully, anyone will be able to digitize their films in a level of quality not available before. Families can save film images that are currently deteriorating with the passing of time. The method is a spin-off of, and is based on, the algorithm by Paul Debevec, Ph.D.. The more experience and skill with a desktop computer, the better. Combine a desktop computer with a good scanner and a light source and you have the makings of a professional grade digitizer. Here is an image from the 1940's. My uncle and two cousins plus either me or my brother(the todler)
The difference between this and common Back Scanning approaches is the format of the digitized image. High Dynamic Range images store image data in floating point format. A series of exposures of the same image are combined in such a way as to yield one HDR image. The HDR may be treated as a real negative and a software exposure then made into a digital print. Where HDR differ is in the introduction of compressors. A compressor attempts to select, from the information available in the digital negative, enough data to create a single print. More than a standard image from a negative, the compressed image reflects the philosophy of the designer. Some imitate the human visual system. Some reproduce real-world methods such as photographers may use (dodge & burn). Still others attempt to be objective and present all detail in the negative in the digital print.

You will need a viewer for the HDR film scan.

Here is a brief page on using the scanner to make portraits.Scanner Portraits

Occasionally color issues show up. In scanning film, ND-filters are used as a substitute for shutter speed control. If the filters have a cast, Matlab scripts will make the correction. Better filters will not need the correction. Here are Matlab correction scripts to do the job. If you don't have the science and math for this, then wait until I clean/simplify them some. These are not Plug 'n Play. Read the scripts and the notes inside.
A Matlab script to construct a CIE gamut chart is also available.