Quick question

[EDL]

I'm sure over time, once I get a new camera and start shooting for HDR scenes (I have a lot to learn there alone) I'll get a better feel (and I'll purchase Photomatix too). Right now I've done, what 3 or 4 total and all from the "HDR Shoot Out" cars posted by other photographers.

I don't have Photoshop (an expensive piece of software!), and only have paint Shop Pro 8, so have to make due with that for PP after Photomatix.

I got my old Oly C3030 out, managed to get my old, crappy smartmedia cards working again (hex editors work wonders there) and have shot exactly ONE bracketed shot using the bracketing function in the camera just to see how it would work out. Definitely not a pic I'm posting here as it's just my fireplace room that is cluttered and messy, heh (wife would be highly upset me if I did that!).

In the mean time, there are quite a few subjects in my area that I've been eyeing up for shoots. Just need the time and cooperation from the weather (and gotta find my dang tripod).

Peanut, get your bracketed shots, load them up in Photomatix then select either Painterly or Surreal preset (I've found those to work best for me so far), then the first thing, turn down the "Strength" slider. That alone will make a huge improvement. Then you can tweak and play with the other sliders to start fine tuning. That's how I've done it so far for my vast 4 attempts.

After I get things close there, then I load up in paint Shop Pro 8 and tweak a little more.