HDR beginner pics. CC

[daparham]

I have only had my D-SLR (my first one) for a little over a month now and I have been trying HDR pictures the past few days.
Take it easy on me as Ive only had a camera for a few weeks and am mainly asking to see how my HDR's are looking.

All of these are a 3 exposure HDR with handheld.

 

[adversus]

1 and 2 you are on the right track.

3 hurts my eyes. As in it seriously gives my eyes an eye-ache. The halo-effect is the prime example when HDR goes a bit too far.

If you take a look at 1/2, what do you notice? I notice that the sky is still pretty dark. High Dynamic Range means just that, a high dynamic range. You want your images to pop, seeing ALL the colors (i.e. "information") contained within the photo, without it looking too cartoony. Unless the cartoon is what you are looking for, of course.

 

[manaheim]

As always, composition should be first... effects and processing should be a function of delivering the composition in a manner that is meaningful to the viewer.

Effects and processing alone are not composition.

If your composition is poor, the image is poor, now matter how nuclear the colors happen to be.

 

[480sparky67 67]

If the C&C is for the HDR processing, I couldn't care less about the comp. My first 10 or 12 tries at HDR was the shed in my back yard. I wasn't looking for an award-winning pix. Only when I felt a had a grasp of the fundamentals of HDR did I start caring about the composition.

 

[WesternGuy]

First of all, everone's idea of HDR is probably different, including mine - I believe that you should not be able to tell that an image was taken using an HDR methodology, or alternativley, it should not be too obvious. For me, these are too "overcooked" and the third one suffers from halos around the guy in the picture. If you were going for the "surreal" look then I would say you have accomplished that much, now all you have to do is resolve the halos in the last pic.

Regards,

WesternGuy

 

[Tomasko]

#1 and #2 are over-saturated (or at least they seems so on my LCD). Colors seem to be little off too.. I thought Coca-Cola logo was red, not with an orange tint...
#3 is simply awful

 

[MissCream]

I'm confused, if these are a blend of three exposures why does they guy in the third picture have a halo around him? I'm new to HDR as well but it looks like you tried to burn the sky or something.

 

[Compaq]

I've noticed halos are much more visible if you set the smoothing slider (light mode) to less than medium. Less smoothing => more painterly look is what my observations so far have told me. (photomatix)

 

[480sparky67 67]

I'm confused, if these are a blend of three exposures why does they guy in the third picture have a halo around him? I'm new to HDR as well but it looks like you tried to burn the sky or something.

Halos (or 'blooming') are a by-product of the software's internal processing, not any result of the user's manual editing.

 

[Sameen]

Hey,
I'm fairly new here so I don't really know what a critique consists of here.Anyway many people are saying these are too sharp and vibrant.HDR usually has this effect.I experienced the same thing.What kind of software are you using? I am currently using Adobe photoshop CS4.In this the software give options.What I originally selected was HDR enhanced which gave this kind of effect.Then I found out that if you select HDR compressed instead it really enhances the beauty but does not give the "sharp" effect.
Anyway hope I helped

 

[Tomasko]

Sameen, are you talking about TRUE hdr or about hdr as a photoshop effect? Because true hdr NEVER does that

 

[daparham]

Yeah I didnt expect too many good responses...lol
I am using Photomatix and I also have Photoshop CS5

I am trying to learn about the composition of the photos and how to take the best pictures. That's why I joined this site so I can hopefully read peoples posts for tips and tricks. Thanks for the notes guys.

 

[Compaq]

When you're tone mapping in photomatix, you're enhancing local contrast, as opposed to the tone compressor or whatever it's called, which enhances global contrast. Local contrast really gets out details in all tone values (given you have enough exposures, of course), but can be overdone, resulting in a little real life close picture. What we are doing, is we are reproducing the dynamic range in the original scene, which your eyes probably were able to see.

I recommend reading this. It gives a nice little introduction to bit depth, dynamic range as well as some of the photomatix functions.