My first "outdoor" HDR photo.

Ernicus · May 24, 2012

Well, two things went against me. I got a late start to the day which put me at the spot I wanted to shoot at noon, and I wanted bright sunny day to practice on but instead cloud cover rolled in. I shot anyway and here is what I got. Feedback appreciated. Not sure if I like the original size or the crop better.
Don't care
for the edges when zoomed in on the skylilne and big tree...when I checked the remove ghost thing it made the clouds look really fake and fine lined...surely theres somewhere in between.

Bynx · May 24, 2012

Since you were doing your indoor shot competely bass ackwards it would be better if you tell us what you did here so we will have a better idea how to help you. Id say your overerexposed shots dont go far enough to start with.

manny212 · May 24, 2012

Bynx said:
Since you were doing your indoor shot competely bass ackwards it would be better if you tell us what you did here so we will have a better idea how to help you. Id say your underexposed shots dont go far enough to start with.

Ernicus · May 24, 2012

lol. I started with 1/10 sec f/11 turned 3 clicks and shot stepping down to 1/2500 sec f/11

I tried to do 4 over, one middle and 4 under. would it be easier to resize and throw them up here or can you tell by the numbers?

Bynx · May 24, 2012

How did you decide to start with 1/10 second as your most bright image? Would you mind posting that image?

vipgraphx · May 24, 2012

Do you have AEB on your camera? If you do I would just do that . Also are you shooting in aperture priority or manual?

This scene you could easily have just used +2,0,-2 , unless you are shooting directly into the sun most day shots are fine with 3 exposures 2 stops apart........

As far as the image it self the processing is not there and the composition is not good. The sky has clouds but it also is boring and you chose to have more of that than land. On that note the land is also boring. Just not very well executed shot.

Ernicus · May 24, 2012

Bynx said:
How did you decide to start with 1/10 second as your most bright image? Would you mind posting that image?

I took a few pics that were over exposed and decided that setting was very overexposed and started there. Sure, i'll put it up.

Ernicus · May 24, 2012

vipgraphx said:
Do you have AEB on your camera? If you do I would just do that . Also are you shooting in aperture priority or manual?

I was shooting full manual mode. I dunno what AEB is, still kinda learning this camera...I can check the manual. lol.

vipgraphx said:
This scene you could easily have just used +2,0,-2 , unless you are shooting directly into the sun most day shots are fine with 3 exposures 2 stops apart........

Good info

vipgraphx said:
As far as the image it self the processing is not there and the composition is not good. The sky has clouds but it also is boring and you chose to have more of that than land. On that note the land is also boring. Just not very well executed shot.

While I appreciate all feedback, this is sort of a carry over from my other thread where I was practicing in the house, not sure if you followed that one or not. While doing these exercises, my focus is the procedure. Gathering the exposures, correctly, compiling and editing so they come out like I want. So that when I do find a nice scene I want to shoot, I will do it correctly.

This was just a pull of section of the highway, nothing special about it. Other than someone thought it was scenic. So framing and composition were not important on this exercise. I chose the sky over land because the land would not move, the sky would. I wanted to see how movement affected this sort of photography. Whether I shot more land or more sky, the result would have been the same...a boring landscape picture, which is irrelevant for me in this exercise.

Bynx · May 24, 2012

You dont make things easy for us trying to understand what you are doing. There is no EXIF data with the overexposed shot. Was that shot at 1/10 sec at f11? Its too overexposed for any image I would use, and yet if it was used your final image is too dark in the shadows to account for that.

slackercruster · May 24, 2012

OP Looks good!

If you want to see some other results, you got lots of exposures. Just feed in more or less exposures from the up or down range. I'm just getting started as well. We are lucky we are in the dig age. Can blast away and test all sort of ideas.

Here are my HDR tests. Check the thread out for lots of great HDR.

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/...-dynamic-range-photos-here-9.html#post1964595

Ernicus · May 24, 2012

Bynx said:
You dont make things easy for us trying to understand what you are doing. There is no EXIF data with the overexposed shot. Was that shot at 1/10 sec at f11? Its too overexposed for any image I would use, and yet if it was used your final image is too dark in the shadows to account for that.

LOL, well I can't help you understand if I don't understand completely myself. Not sure why no exif data, odd. But yeah that was the 1/10 sec f/11. I'll play around later and pull out one off each end and see what changes, so forth. Obviously I am just going through a lot of trial and error while I read and learn.

I tried another tonight while shooting water flowing over a dam. Disastrously failed attempt. Not even gonna post to get advice on that one. I'll just call it fail. lol.

Bynx · May 25, 2012

Slackercruster your examples of the red poppy are interesting but a poor choice to illustrate. Red looks bad no matter what you do. There wasnt any dynamic range in the image to start with so how could doing an HDR improve the range? Also you should understand the difference between HDR and tone mapping. And the difference between pseudo (fake) hdr. Using a single file, especially a jpeg will not create an HDR image. Using a single Raw file will only bring out the dynamic range that your camera is capable of shooting in a single Raw file which is a little broader than the original image you see which has been convered so you can see it. No one can see a raw file until it has been converted and in that conversion there is information which is lost.

slackercruster · May 25, 2012

Bynx said:
Slackercruster your examples of the red poppy are interesting but a poor choice to illustrate. Red looks bad no matter what you do. There wasnt any dynamic range in the image to start with so how could doing an HDR improve the range? Also you should understand the difference between HDR and tone mapping. And the difference between pseudo (fake) hdr. Using a single file, especially a jpeg will not create an HDR image. Using a single Raw file will only bring out the dynamic range that your camera is capable of shooting in a single Raw file which is a little broader than the original image you see which has been convered so you can see it. No one can see a raw file until it has been converted and in that conversion there is information which is lost.

Hi Bynx!

The flower is what I had to work with. Don't have much time to fool with it right now. Went in backyard to find something quick to test.

Tone mapping is part of the HDR genre, it all comes under that field. I don't separate HDR into all these various categories as fake or real HDR. If HDR tech is used to process the pix...it is HDR. Sure some HDR will have more HDR than others.

I gave a number of illustrations as tests to show 3 exposures versus 1 exposure vs making 3 exposures in computer. Yes you are right about the single file RAW comments. But HDR allowed the RAW file to be expanded to its max potential. Without the HDR tech the RAW would have looked more like the single JPEG file.

Bynx · May 25, 2012

Any and all files can be tone mapped to give that cartoon look which has nothing to do with HDR. HDR itself cant be seen without going through the tone mapping process to bring it down from a 32 bit file. But its when people go nuts with the sliders and make a good HDR image into a tone mapped piece of junk. The same kind of junky look they would have gotten from a single jpeg file given too much tone mapping. I only mentioned that to you because

Originally posted by Anvh

Pseudo means fake, they aren't HDR but simply toned map images.
The shots off his kids and with the truck are most likely pseudo because it would be hard to take 3 different exposure of that.
Nothing negatieve meant by it but they shouldn't be called HDR since they arent, that's all i'm saying.

Then you said....Wrong, it seems they have a category for em at the Strictly HDR forum. ..."The Creationists" So they are HDR

He is absolutely right. If an image is beyond the range of a single shot then its an HDR image. Anything less than that is not an HDR image just an image that has been tone mapped or monkeyed with any which way. Since images must be tone mapped to be seen they all get put in the same pot. But there should be two categories -- HDR images and images that are just tone mapped. The problem is they arent and its those guys that tone map badly which give HDR its bad reputation.