Conservative (real estate) HDRs from today

[manaheim]

Yeah, I'd like to take a crack at doing the HDR of your evil dining room.

BTW, the scenario you describe (sunny day, dark interior) is exactly what the HDR thing is for... and why I use them... so, I doubt that was the issue.

If the files are not massive and you don't have more than 5-7 of them, you can email them to me at...

[email protected]

(remove all the capital Hs)

BTW, I find I generally run the "strength" between 80 and 100... didn't even occur to me you would want to do less, but I may have to try that now.

 

[Jon_Are]

OK, Chris, I sent you 6 exposures of the EDR*

Please let me know that you've received them OK.

Thanks,

Jon


*Evil Dining Room

 

[manaheim]

Ok, I'll check it out tonight.

 

[Jon_Are]

Chris, please be sure you jot down every setting in sight.

Thanks again,

Jon

 

[Enough Already]

This has been a great read. My thanks to those taking the time to talk about it in detail, its been very helpful. Im sticking to one light source (natural) for the moment as my masking skills need to be honed before attempting anything like that described in one of the other posts. Would a prime wide angle lens like a 12mm or 14mm give less distortion than the wide zoom?? I know its not as wide as the 10 of the Siggy, but to me some of the corrections seem less natural than the original distorted versions. Thats just me I guess.

 

[musicaleCA]

Yes, in general, a fixed lens will have less distortion than a zoom lens. Distortion will usually be uniform barrel distortion on a fixed wide-angle, but with a good lens it probably won't be a serious problem. Fixed lenses won't exhibit the complex distortion as seen on the Sigma zoom used to take the shots earlier. (Unless it's a really bad fixed lens.)

What you might be seeing is a little bit of perspective distortion, which isn't a function of the lens (well, unless you are able to shift it). It's quite easily corrected in post. (Frankly, sometimes it's better to just embrace the distortion, for things like buildings and the like. In a room, it would probably be best to make sure the camera is at eye-level if it's on a tripod, because the wide angle lens will increase the amount of perspective distortion perceived.)

 

[manaheim]

Hmmm...

Ok, here is what I came up with...

(note I didn't do any perspective correction or anything)

I pulled them in from RAWs with white balance "as shot".

Settings:
Strength: 100
Color Saturation: 66
Luminosity: 2.9
Microcontrast: 6.9
Smoothing: 1.8
White Point: 2.349%
Black Point: 0.031%
Gamma: 0.81
Temp: -7.2
Saturation Highlights: -0.8
Saturation Shadows: 1.4
Micro-Smoothing: 5.1
The rest: 0

As usual, when I do the actual processing, I find there's still too much red in it. No idea why that happens, so I took about 30 points out in photoshop. That being said, I think your renditions are WAY too white and in some cases kind overexposed. (it was a little hard to judge the red since I didn't see the place, but to my eye this looks pretty close)

My thought here is that you should keep in mind that you're not trying to make this look as if you have everything illuminated perfectly, or as if it was illuminated by direct sun (with no ceiling or roof blocking the sun), but rather than you are trying to make it look essentially as it would when you are standing there.

With a house, that means that it will generally be illuminated (relatively poorly) by incandescant lights, which have a warming cast to them that accentuates reds and warmer colors. It also means you will have some reasonably dramatic shadows and such, which will be very pleasing to the eye and shouldn't be totally lost.

This being said, I think you also had a VERY bright day outside... so bright that maybe you should have used a flash for these to compensate. No matter how much I dorked with it, I couldn't keep it from overexposing the exterior... but I need to try one more thing. (This was just my first try at it)

 

[manaheim]

btw, I also put the photomax settings up on the server for you.

http://www.wickedtiki.com/images/tpf/memcor/jonare1.xmp

 

[Jon_Are]

Thanks for taking the time to do this, Chris.

Taking some of the reds out sounds like a good tip. In this case, you got a pink room with pink curtains, so, yeah, it's going to have a red tint to it.

That window is quite the challenge. I'm going to try cutting the window from one of the darkest exposures and seeing how it looks plopped into the HDR. I know that may not be a practical solution, but it'll be fun playing with it. I've already tried using a layer mask, didn't have very good results at all.

I guess part of the lesson might be to be very aware of extremely sunny days.

Use a flash? That would be my very last resort.

This has been a bit frustrating at times, but looking on the bright side, I've learned so much from just this one photo.

And that is how you get better.

Thanks again,

Jon

 

[manaheim]

Yeah, masking was something I also considered. There really should be a way to do this, however... I suspect its something in the exposures... like perhaps you only use flash for your brightest exposure. This will compensate for the exterior light being SO bright while bringing up the interior... and the flash will likely barely be noticed when you combine all the exposures together.

Oh you know I think I have a set of HDRs where I did the same position with and without flash. I could probably test the theory by combining them a bit.

 

[Jon_Are]

Just thought I'd clarify my 'flash as a last resort' statement.

I know that flash, used properly, can produce some beautiful shots and solve some complex lighting issues.

The reason it's not for me, though, is because part of my marketing strategy will be that I utilize only natural lighting. For good or for bad, it has a nice ring to it and seems like a desirable quality to promote.

If I get caught using a flash, though, there goes my niche.

So, I'm determined to overcome this challenge in a non-flash fashion.

Flash: The Devil's Sunshine. :mrgreen:

Jon