1st HDR shot w/ a circular polarizer....C&C

[benny420]

Shot on a 7D with a Canon 50mm 1.4 at f/16 right in front of the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park this morning (The Shining and Dumb and Dumber were filmed there)......I'm very new to HDR photography and am curious what aperture you think I should use for this shot and where I should focus?? Being a n00b, I decided to focus on the small peak on the far left of the shot feeling it was about 1/2 way into the scene.


View from Stanley Hotel in Estes Park by BennyHogan, on Flickr

 

[Erikah672]

I like it, can't really say to much more since I have not done HDR

 

[Josh220]

How many shots is this?

Aren't you supposed to not use polarizers on HDR's? If you are getting the full dynamic range what would be the purpose?

 

[benny420]

How many shots is this?

Aren't you supposed to not use polarizers on HDR's? If you are getting the full dynamic range what would be the purpose?

It's 5 shots (-2,-1,0,+1,+2).....I'm a n00b, but I have never heard anything about not using polarziers on HDR's, without it the colors wouldn't have been nearly as vivid. Just adjusting the exposures and combining the shots into one photo is not the same as a polarizer imho. But then again, I just got this the other day and have only taken about 4 other photos with it before taking these.

 

[Josh220]

How many shots is this?

Aren't you supposed to not use polarizers on HDR's? If you are getting the full dynamic range what would be the purpose?

It's 5 shots (-2,-1,0,+1,+2).....I'm a n00b, but I have never heard anything about not using polarziers on HDR's, without it the colors wouldn't have been nearly as vivid. Just adjusting the exposures and combining the shots into one photo is not the same as a polarizer imho. But then again, I just got this the other day and have only taken about 4 other photos with it before taking these.

HDR already over-saturates, hence why there are so many overcooked HDR's on the internet (99% of the ones posted on this forum for example). Unless there is water in your shot, there is really no need for one.

 

[RobNZ]

.....what aperture you think I should use for this shot and where I should focus??

Looks like you certainly got enough DoF with f/16, however that peak is still a fair distance off (you risked losing imediate foreground focus, but you didnt ), you could have (depending on what lens and focal length you were using) focussed on the road 3-6 feet in front and still have gone hyperfocal at f/11ish upwards, this is the sort of thing I would test and check for onsite. This would require a wide angle lens of course.


All of my HDR's have been shot without a polariser and I have plenty of colour saturation and detail to work with and I dont usually want to reduce reflections as HDR's can really enhance reflective surfaces, so that would be a strike against using a polariser.

IMO, your first go at HDR is a good effort, but you do have some issues, you have haloing on the mountain ranges, the scene has way too much contrast, blacks are way too deep, midtones as well.

My tip for HDR tonemapping, tonemap to get the image to actually look like it was in real life, this is the foundation you can build from, and from this you can go for the realistic look, which will have much more depth and detail (this is how I typically process mine), or the surrealistic, typically disliked here but loved in other areas with the right subject/composition.

Once tonemapped its off to photoshop to finish, tonemapping is just the start IMO.

You may also want to increase the dynamic range your capturing, you've captured from -2 to +2 in 1 stop increments, try using 3 shots at 2 stop increments and when the scene needs it go from -4 to +4 so it would be -4, -2, 0, 0, +2, +4 which will give you much more to play with and much more scope and range to process. I shoot -2 to +2, 3 shot handheld and 6 shots -4 to +4 when tripod mounted.

Hope you dont mind but I gave your image a bit of a tweak to how I see it looking, the trunks of the tree's were clipped in the original.

 

[benny420]

THanks for all the suggestions RobNZ, I love the feedback!! I attempted to tone it down a bit using the original raws instead of the jpegs I combined on the 1st attempt. For some reason, a silver car is no visible when it wasn't in the other?? I used photoshop cs5 and removed the ghosts in both.....any ideas why it can now be seen??



View from Stanley Toned Down by BennyHogan, on Flickr

 

[nahtanoj]

i've been fiddling with HDR and i can't get mine to look this good. and for that i hate you. but, i love the picture.

 

[RobNZ]

No problem, remove ghosts feature is pretty good, but its not perfect, should be pretty simple to clone it out though.

Can I assume when you were in tonemapping mode you tried selecting a few other frames to remove the car?

 

[benny420]

No problem, remove ghosts feature is pretty good, but its not perfect, should be pretty simple to clone it out though.

Can I assume when you were in tonemapping mode you tried selecting a few other frames to remove the car?

I have no idea what tonemapping even is?? What would be a good program to do it with? Any tips on the process??
Thanks for all your suggestions, I truly appreciate the input.

Also, where would you focus with a 50mm? I don't have a wide-angle lens just yet...

 

[Tulsa]

Way overdone. I need to put a link in my Sig, so I can show what a real HDR should look like. So in the many posts like these I can simply say... see below. I dont think you need that many exposures for that shot, try with just 3?

 

[benny420]

Way overdone. I need to put a link in my Sig, so I can show what a real HDR should look like. So in the many posts like these I can simply say... see below. I dont think you need that many exposures for that shot, try with just 3?

Interested in seeing some!!

 

[RobNZ]

No problem, remove ghosts feature is pretty good, but its not perfect, should be pretty simple to clone it out though.

Can I assume when you were in tonemapping mode you tried selecting a few other frames to remove the car?

I have no idea what tonemapping even is?? What would be a good program to do it with? Any tips on the process??
Thanks for all your suggestions, I truly appreciate the input.

Also, where would you focus with a 50mm? I don't have a wide-angle lens just yet...

You must have tonemapped to produce an HDR image, I do mine from Adobe Bridge, simply select the images in the sequence, then click on tools-photoshop-merge to HDR pro......thats the tonemapping part.

With a 50mm, hmmm, maybe the trees in the foreground and off the top of my head you probably needed f/16 with a 50mm to get the foreground so sharp as well, so good job.

Tips on the process: First and foremost get the image looking realistic, check for haloing on high contrast edges, tonemapping is a hard beast to master so I spend quite sometime getting it right.

Radius: 500 Maxed
Strength: 100-140ish
Detail: Maxed
Check remove ghosts box
Adjust exposure slider so midtones look good.
Adjust gamma slider to almost recover highlights
Pull back your detail slider until the image looks fairly normal

Save this preset (so when you screw it up beyond all recognition you can start over), you will be experimenting.
Pull your strength back to just before any halos start showing up, fine tune from there, check it at 100% (its not 100% in reality, just 100% for the preview render), look for artifacts on edges adjust etc and funky colours where things may have been moving.

Dont worry if its not contrasty, vibrant enough, youre better to fix this in CS5 itself.

Save preset.

Look away for a few minutes, do something else, check back in, how does it look? anything odd? anything that needs further adjustment?

Yes....fix it

Save preset (notice the save preset thing, I quite often run through my saved presets to give me a headstart, I name them as a shot description so that will jog my memory into selecting another similarily lit scene to work with).

Fixed....export

Finish in CS5, done.

Way overdone. I need to put a link in my Sig, so I can show what a real HDR should look like. So in the many posts like these I can simply say... see below. I dont think you need that many exposures for that shot, try with just 3?

Interested in seeing some!!

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...to-gallery/227543-finally-had-night-away.html

Every single one is an HDR, the daytime beach shots 3 exposures -2,0,+2
The others are all 6, well 5 in reality -4,-2,0,0,+2,+4

I usually process the best exposed frame as well to see the difference and sometimes blend parts of it in and or adjust the opactity of the top layer, but generally they are not even close to the HDR version.

 

[Tbini87]

I like the shot, especially since you are just starting to learn HDR. Good job, look forward to seeing more work in the future!