I attempted some HDR photos

[robertwsimpson]

If you've ever tried to mix light and dark subjects in the South Florida sun, you know how difficult it is. Anyway, I HDRed these so that they would look normal rather than picking if I wanted indiscernable details in the dark or completely blown out highlights. C&C is welcome.

1.

2.

3.

4.

 

[robertwsimpson]

And yes, I know there are three of the same mustang in that one shot... the subject is the landscaping.

 

[The Nine Deuce]

I think its a great use of HDR, the ghosting effect of the cars is unfortunate though.

 

[512]

good experiments, the ghost effect doesn't disturb so much.

 

[robertwsimpson]

if I was trying to get really really good ones, I would just wait for a train. that's the only time that we don't have traffic. Good for the store, bad for pictures. Oh well. Thanks for the compliments.


these were all handheld by the way

 

[inTempus]

I would find a more suitable subject where there are heavy shadow areas that the HDR can bring out the detail. Right now I see too many heavy shadows and no detail in them.

How did you shoot these? Did you use multiple exposures or did you just take a single exposure and play with the exposure settings in Lightroom?

 

[robertwsimpson]

here is a single exposure directly from the camera...

each HDR was made from 3 bracketed exposures.
what kind of subject do you think would be better?

 

[robertwsimpson]

also, for those of you wondering how the perspective changes with focal length and aperture, check this out:

also straight off of the camera


this one was taken with a 50mm
the other was taken at 18mm

 

[512]

front lighting subjects or landscapes look great with hdr, try to google some images

 

[robertwsimpson]

I typically hate HDR, so googling images is not going to make me see anything I want to see... just FYI.

 

[camz]

On #1 your exposure of the sky is different between the left side and right side of the green light pole.

 

[robertwsimpson]

oo I didn't even see that. I'll just crop it to take care of that, since I don't know how to control what happens there.

 

[ocular]

There's a trick you can use to help with the ghosting of the cars. Once you've tone mapped the hdr, open up with photoshop and add one of the original pics as a layer, use a mask to bring in the car, and clone out the ghost.

 

[robertwsimpson]

yeah, I was thinking about doing that... but like I said, the landscaping was the subject, and I didn't really care that much about the cars being ghosted. if I need to do it again, I'll just wait until there's a train. that way there won't be any cars to worry about.

I'm still curious why this wasn't "good" HDR material. to me it made perfect sense considering the difference in light levels between the planter areas and the sky/directly lit areas.