Amsterdam - Windmill on the Cycle Path (HDR)

Hi Guys & Galls =),

I recently bought a bag for my tripod so I could carry it with me on my bike, here is one of the first results of this new ability. This is a merge of 9 exposures to HDR, taken on my D2H. I have recently gone back to using the D2H over the D200. There are several reasons for this, the main at the moment being that processing HDRs from 4mp is much quicker than 10mp =).

The 9 RAW files were combines to a 32bit HDR file in Photoshop and then openned in Photomatix. After playing with some tonemapping settings I saved a 16bit Tiff and openned back in Photoshop for some finishing touches. This was my first propper attempt at tonemapping.

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This next image was taken slightly earlier, just before the clouds moved out of the sun. This has much more Post Tonemapping processing done in Photoshop.

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I would appreciate any feedback you might have =),

 

Thank you all very much for the great feedback! =) I am keeping an eye out for some nice cloud formations and alternate pretty locations so I can try out some more dynamic HDRs but at the moment it's clear, which I would usually be happy about. I guess I have the HDR bug =/.

Biggs: I totally agree about the composition being better on the first one. I mostly like the 2nd one for the detail in the clouds and sun. I will try to get the best of both worlds next time =)

Vern: Thanks, I have only just started to cycle around here, it really is amazing how you can go around without worrying about cars and trucks =)

Sharon, Sanyika: I did try to keep the lighting faithful to how it was at the time when I was processing the HDR so it's very gratifying to hear you both think I've achieved that natural look =)

Gale: Thank you, I processed the 2nd image to look more like film so that one might not enlarge quite so well with that level of grain. Also I forgot to remove the Chromic Aberration from the RAW files first so they both suffer a little. If I do print them I need to fix that first.

When I processed the HDR for the 1st image the sign came out pink instead of blue. Does anyone know why this happened? I am curious, I know that if you have different information in some of the exposures the program gets confused and creates random colours in those areas but this was not the case here. The images were all aligned pretty well and the sign did not move during the exposures... weird =s

 

HulaMike, Gordon: Thanks for the feedback, it gives me something to think about next time =)

Douglas: If you can't see the images you should be able to see them here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45699166@N00/463311874/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45699166@N00/463311550/