Playing with HDR - Questions about night HDR

[pgowder]

I also tried a few at night. The noise was terrible!
Are there some tips for that?

1. Always use the lowest ISO if at all possible. Raising the ISO defeats the purpose of HDR since it limits the tonal range captured in any one of the individual shots.

2. Be careful not to boost the shadow detail excessively. You need to expose properly so that the "shadow" shot captures the desired detail without significant boosting.

Failing to follow these rules will lead to a significant increase in noise.

Also I've seen some shots of fireworks using HDR. How is that done with the long exposure?

Usually the fireworks themselves exist in only one of the shots. The HDR processing is used primarily for the background skyline or foreground. The only way to get multiple images of the fireworks in the HDR stack is to grenerate multiple versions from a single RAW original with different conversion settings.

Thanks for the advice!

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[manaheim]

Oh hey, Dwig knew the answer on the firework one. Interesting! Thanks, Dwig!