Starting out with HDR

zhound · Mar 16, 2012

With magic lantern I was able to do more than 3 exposures on my canon. I'm happy with the results but I'm sure there's room for improvements. So please feel free to constructively criticise.

480sparky · Mar 16, 2012

Got some haloing going on there. For me, that's pushing the process too far and overcooking.

The barn & tree look like they've been lightened manually.

vipgraphx · Mar 16, 2012

#1 - Try cloning out the sticks in the bottom half of the picture they are distracting. Remove some of that haloing around the front right tree and remove some dark areas out of the clouds and crop to make it panorama. The sky is not that interesting to have so much of it. Use original exposures for the removal of the haloing and dark areas in the sky ( if you crop the sky enough you could probably skip this step.)

#2 -you have lost some detail in the bushes, bring it back. Straighten the horizon and also remove the almost black areas in the clouds. If you can remove that water hose/line by the bushed that would also be a plus. I like the misty look out by the mountains thats cool. The sky is a little blown and dirty so fix that....Composition is ok you could have probably moved more to the left and not had the fence and bushes in. I am not sure they help because my eye gets closed into the bottom right of the picture.

#3 It feels dirty and not crazy about the composition and photo. to be its boring but take that with a grain of salt.

Big Mike · Mar 16, 2012

With magic lantern I was able to do more than 3 exposures on my canon

You can do as many exposure as you want, on any camera...just put it in manual mode and adjust the exposure between shots. If you do it very quickly, not not much different from AEB.

2WheelPhoto · Mar 16, 2012

Nice first pics.

To impress facebook friends over cook the $#%^ out of them.

For more pro appearing have the HDR processing as natural as possible.

zhound · Mar 16, 2012

Thank you for taking the time. I took your advice and came up with these. Unfortunately I'm not so good with PS to remove those artifacts. So I tried to do what I can with cropping for now.

For #1 I generated another HDR flat. And did some slight color correction after cropping it.

I had a better shot for #2 so I used it to generate another HDR without the grunge toning. And cropped it as best I can. Not sure how to deal with the bleaching on right side of the sky.

vipgraphx said:
#1 - Try cloning out the sticks in the bottom half of the picture they are distracting. Remove some of that haloing around the front right tree and remove some dark areas out of the clouds and crop to make it panorama. The sky is not that interesting to have so much of it. Use original exposures for the removal of the haloing and dark areas in the sky ( if you crop the sky enough you could probably skip this step.)

#2 -you have lost some detail in the bushes, bring it back. Straighten the horizon and also remove the almost black areas in the clouds. If you can remove that water hose/line by the bushed that would also be a plus. I like the misty look out by the mountains thats cool. The sky is a little blown and dirty so fix that....Composition is ok you could have probably moved more to the left and not had the fence and bushes in. I am not sure they help because my eye gets closed into the bottom right of the picture.

#3 It feels dirty and not crazy about the composition and photo. to be its boring but take that with a grain of salt.

Bynx · Mar 16, 2012

HDR programs like Photomatix do about 3/4 the job. The last quarter takes work with Photoshop or similar to give some life back into the image that tone mapping with Photomatix has taken out. The images are usually pretty flat and need that work in Photoshop.