First time doing HDR

rookieshooter

I just bracket, import to photomatix and hit "process." I'm not too enthused about any of them but thought I'd share regardless since it's fun to try new things

I have done a 5 shot bracket + 0.7. If anyone has any advice I'd love to hear it. I am trying to avoid the over-saturated look.
San Francisco









and some pics from France

DonRicklin

A really nice set of NOT 'overblown.cooked' HDR's

clap

My favorite is the last one!

Don

kres

HDR's intrigue me - might try my hand at them soon.

So, here is an observation: Do many of these look "out of sync" or is it me? Example: Look at the #1, doesn't it look as though the bridge is not perfectly in line with all it's layers?

Counterpoint: The composition and broad color capture is really great, You've got a nack for getting sweet skies!

DonRicklin

kres wrote:

HDR's intrigue me - might try my hand at them soon.

So, here is an observation: Do many of these look "out of sync" or is it me? Example: Look at the #1, doesn't it look as though the bridge is not perfectly in line with all it's layers?

Counterpoint: The composition and broad color capture is really great, You've got a nack for getting sweet skies!

Now that kres mentions it, I see ghosting on the back end of the bridge and on the church tower.

What software did you use?

Don

Mark Ledingham

I don't have any problems with HDR as long as saturation is kept within reasonable bounds. Rookie, I think these are just great! Especially shots #2 and #4 which are rich in contrast and lighting.

rookieshooter

DonRicklin wrote:

Now that kres mentions it, I see ghosting on the back end of the bridge and on the church tower.

What software did you use?

Don

These were handheld so it's possible some camera shake occurred, which I think is why the first shot looks a bit mismatched.

I am using Photomatix Pro 3 to do the conversion.

DonRicklin

rookieshooter wrote:

These were handheld so it's possible some camera shake occurred, which I think is why the first shot looks a bit mismatched.

I am using Photomatix Pro 3 to do the conversion.

It should still do better than that on the ghosting!

Don

mtully

Rookie,

Great series! The last shot is just about perfect. On the first shot - run the exposures through Photomatix again. If the mis-match occurs again, then change the method by which it does the alignment. It should do best in this situation by pushing the "by matching features" button under Align Source Images.

rookieshooter

mtully wrote:

Rookie,

Great series! The last shot is just about perfect. On the first shot - run the exposures through Photomatix again. If the mis-match occurs again, then change the method by which it does the alignment. It should do best in this situation by pushing the "by matching features" button under Align Source Images.

Thanks. I tried running it again but it is still misaligned. I'll have to bring a tripod next time.

squirl033

rookieshooter wrote:

These were handheld so it's possible some camera shake occurred, which I think is why the first shot looks a bit mismatched.

I am using Photomatix Pro 3 to do the conversion.

if the images aren't lined up correctly, it's very hard to eliminate the ghosting effect. the "match features" function in Photomatix helps, and can get rid of minor misalignent and ghosting, but it looks in the first image like there was some pretty significant camera movement, more than the software could fix. the only way to ensure good HDR images is to shoot from a tripod. you can sometimes fake it, using photoshop levels to create artificially over- and under-exposed versions of the image, but that never works as well.

i really like the last two images... quite nicely done!