More HDR...

EDIT: Another shot further down the thread now.

Ok, now don't get too excited as its not exactly a wall hanger lol

Whilst researching what GND filters to get, for an up coming holiday to Scotland, I came across lots of talk about HDR images and CS2's method for making them. Its not really something I had read up on before but decided it could be another way of getting good landscapes whilst I'm in Scotland.

I rushed home tonight to have a quick go after work as I had been reading about it all day. I was presented with a very dull sky so I decided to just do a quick shot from my front garden (I should have maybe removed the rubbish first and maybe made sure the horizon was straight but hey ho lol).

This was a blend of 8 images. I can see the potential to get some very good results from this but I can also see how easy it is to get things looking very fake VERY quickly! After making the sky look very menacing it looked so wrong so I calmed things down to get them looking how it looked to my naked eye which made a huge difference - subtlety is the key with these shots!

I'd be interested to see other HDR shots and would appreciate any advice from anyone more experienced at this. I'm still going to get some filters for Scotland but I'll definitely be some of this stuff along side it as well.

The photo shows a comparison between the camera's original exposure reading (with me trying to get a happy medium of sky and foreground) which is on the left and the 8 shot blend on the right.



As I said its only a first attempt and I only had a quick play around but its definitely something I plan on practicing as I think given the right care some very nice images could be produced with this method.

 

Yes sorry about the size, I post on a few forums that don't like large images so I just did once to suit all.

Oh I probably didn't need 8 shots. As it was my first time I wasn't sure how many to do. I had read anywhere from 3 and up was good and the more shots the more DR you could get so I just did these without thinking too much about it  

 

Thanks all. I'll be practicing this method more over the next two weeks to make sure I know what I'm doing in time for my holiday  

 

Another quick test I did today whilst out photographing. Thought I'd go extreme and have the sun full on in the shot. Experimenting with Photomatix to try and get something realistic. Excuse my friend, had no idea I was about to take a shot or he might have given us a pose lol

 

I merged multiple exposures in Photomatix and then applied tone mapping. I aimed to get the image looking as close to how I saw it as I could. I think HDR images fail to look real when sections of the image are mich brighter than they should be. Here I kept the range rover looking a little dark on purpose to maintain a level of realism. I could probably boost the shadows more but I like to be subtle where I can and this whole side of the car was in dark sahde.

Its all just experimenting at the moment anyway to see what works and what doesn't.

That clamp was made by my friend (the one pictured) as he is an engineer and runs the workshop at the company he works for so is always making custom stuff. Its holding a D2x with 600mm f/4

We are off to the Isle of Mull on the 4th may until the 13th. Really looking forward to it :biggrin: