Venice Beach sunset HDR attempt

[IanRB]

Here's my attempt at a HDR of a sunset at venice beach in southern california. Its a little noisy i know and the horizon is off but im more curious what you think of my attempt to try to utilize HDR to bring out tones in my picture. Any comments? What i can do better?

 

[Tayfun]

Umm I looked to the one in your flickr gallery because this one is too small. First of all, I think this one is not an HDR because HDR must be composed of at least three differently exposed photos. Then the waves should be silky or blurry but they are not. I guess you took one photo and coppied it to three. You opened and closed the exposures on the copies by a software and combined them to make HDR, right? If so that can not be called as HDR. HDR is made to enlarge the dynamic range, to take the details on the most dark side and the most bright side in one photo where this range excesses the sensors dynamic range capability.

 

[paulk_68]

It would be a great shot but the horizon leaning from left to right a quarter of an inch ruins it.

I apologize if my reply seems harsh, I am only trying to help.

Why put so much work into such a nice image, and then neglect to fix the horizon? I can only imagine that the lean is much more pronounced when viewing a larger version of the picture.

 

[jv17]

i dont care if its small, it is still a beautiful shot..

 

[IanRB]

Umm I looked to the one in your flickr gallery because this one is too small. First of all, I think this one is not an HDR because HDR must be composed of at least three differently exposed photos. Then the waves should be silky or blurry but they are not. I guess you took one photo and coppied it to three. You opened and closed the exposures on the copies by a software and combined them to make HDR, right? If so that can not be called as HDR. HDR is made to enlarge the dynamic range, to take the details on the most dark side and the most bright side in one photo where this range excesses the sensors dynamic range capability.

Well actually in case your not completely familiar with HDR there are two ways you can create an hdr image. There is the preferred take at least three images at different exposure using your camera and there is the technique of using a single raw image and changing the the exposure in photoshop so that you have 3 seperate exposures, one regular, one for the high lights and one for the shadows. Like you said i did that method, but its still considered hdr. I dont like hdr when it looks fake and cartoonish if thats what you were expecting. Its actually still considered HDR from what i have read while trying to learn how to do it.

 

[Lyncca]

Well actually in case your not completely familiar with HDR there are two ways you can create an hdr image. There is the preferred take at least three images at different exposure using your camera and there is the technique of using a single raw image and changing the the exposure in photoshop so that you have 3 seperate exposures, one regular, one for the high lights and one for the shadows. Like you said i did that method, but its still considered hdr. I dont like hdr when it looks fake and cartoonish if thats what you were expecting. Its actually still considered HDR from what i have read while trying to learn how to do it.

I don't think that is correct. It is actually NOT considered HDR, but instead a tone-mapped image. Although you can adjust the RAW files, you still wouldn't have captured the same dynamic range as if you had 3 actual shots.

Nothing wrong with it though The method you used works better if there is movement.
I also don't think anyone wanted it to look radioactive, they were just pointing out the wrong term being used.

It is a really pretty photograph. But, fix that horizon! LOL

 

[Flower Child]

just stunning! good job capturing such a beautiful beautiful moment. i was goign to say something about the leaning horizon but i see someone already beat me to it

 

[N1LSS]

Whether it's technically correct or not, I think it's a great shot

 

[Lyncca]

Whether it's technically correct or not, I think it's a great shot

It *is* technically correct, just not the description of how it was processed (HDR). I played with it a little since you said it was ok in your profile to fix the horizon and bring out the colors. I messed with contrast, curves and did some dodging to bring out the waves and rocks more. It really is a beautiful picture.

You can see a big difference side-by-side with this one and the larger one on your Flickr page.

 

[IanRB]

just stunning! good job capturing such a beautiful beautiful moment. i was going to say something about the leaning horizon but i see someone already beat me to it

Ha well actually i beat everyone to it. I knew it was crooked, but thanks for the nice comments on the photo

Oh and nice edit lyncaa, i was just about to fix the horizon for everyone, which im still going to do, but now at least we can see how it looks.

Im just disappointed its not more clear because i was shooting iso 800 i believe if i remember correctly, possibly 400 and when you try to do this style of hdr or tone mapping or whatever the correct term for it is, it gets really noisy at anything over 200 it seems like

 

[Dhaines94]

Umm I looked to the one in your flickr gallery because this one is too small. First of all, I think this one is not an HDR because HDR must be composed of at least three differently exposed photos. Then the waves should be silky or blurry but they are not. I guess you took one photo and coppied it to three. You opened and closed the exposures on the copies by a software and combined them to make HDR, right? If so that can not be called as HDR. HDR is made to enlarge the dynamic range, to take the details on the most dark side and the most bright side in one photo where this range excesses the sensors dynamic range capability.

I dont think this is exactly right. On my D90 I can shoot one pic in raw, then save it at diff exposures in the camera - isnt this the same as taking a bracketed exposure?

 

[Tayfun]

Well actually in case your not completely familiar with HDR there are two ways you can create an hdr image. There is the preferred take at least three images at different exposure using your camera and there is the technique of using a single raw image and changing the the exposure in photoshop so that you have 3 seperate exposures, one regular, one for the high lights and one for the shadows. Like you said i did that method, but its still considered hdr. I dont like hdr when it looks fake and cartoonish if thats what you were expecting. Its actually still considered HDR from what i have read while trying to learn how to do it.

Actually I am very familiar by HDR but looks like you don't know how it works. Why is HDR done? To enlarge the dynamic range of the photo taken by this way you can take more detail to your photo. Let me explain;
When you take a photo, there is a dynamic range of your sensor and acc. to that some details on the highes light and the lowest light (which are out of your sensors range) are lost. By closing the exposure you take the details on the lightest side. By opening the exposure you get the details of the darkest side. When you combine all of them you take all the details in one photo.

By what you do, you have just one photo where the details on the upper extreme and the lower extreme are lost while shooting it. By opening or closing the exposure later, you cannot gain the details which are not seen by the sensor. So the thing you made IS NOT HDR.

And no I don't mean cartonish look of the photo. Cartonish look is involved by tonemapping. Why are HDR's (the real ones) generally tonemapped? Because thay have got large dynamic range so are more available for tonemapping.

 

[Tayfun]

I dont think this is exactly right. On my D90 I can shoot one pic in raw, then save it at diff exposures in the camera - isnt this the same as taking a bracketed exposure?

I don't know what D90 does inside. If D90 takes three or more photos by adjusting EV each time and then combining it inside, yeah it is HDR. But I don't know if it does so or not.

I took the following explanation from wikipedia. The bold part of the explanation suits to this situation.

"This method was developed to produce a high dynamic range image from a set of photographs taken with a range of exposures. With the rising popularity of digital cameras and easy-to-use desktop software, the term HDR is now popularly used[3] to refer to this process. This composite technique is different from (and may be of lesser or greater quality than) the production of an image from a single exposure of a sensor that has a native high dynamic range. Tone mapping is also used to display HDR images on devices with a low native dynamic range, such as a computer screen."