what am i doing wrong ?

[Fleacz]

hey guys, i've finally got a decent landscape shot to try an HDR. unfortunately they're not coming out as what i expected. i took these in jpeg and didnt realize till after i left the scene *face palm*, but i tried doing it anyway.
1.

this one isn't as noisy as the 2nd picture, but something doesnt seem right about it for an HDR.

2.

this one has a lot of noise. can someone help me out? do the pictures HAVE to be in raw??

 

[Destin]

In order for us to help you, we need to know what your workflow was. How many exposures are in each image? How many stops are the exposures seperated by? And perhaps more importantly, how did you process them? I'm not a big fan of Photoshops built in HDR software, especially on CS4 and below. Don't get me wrong, it can create nice images, but it takes alot of time and work.

I'm currently experimenting with Artizen HDR, and it seems like a pretty decent HDR program. I like it so far.

To be honest, your shots don't look like HDR's to me. There should be more detail in the trees off to the right, and the water in number 1.

The fact that they aren't shot in RAW shouldn't be a huge deal. Not ideal, but Jpegs will work.

I think your exposures just weren't far enough apart, or you didn't use enough of them.

 

[Fleacz]

i had 5 different exposures, from 1, 1/2, 0, +1/2, +1. i processed them with photoshop CS5. im getting the feeling you're right about the exposures not being far enough. is there an HDR software that is free?

 

[Bynx]

When shooting directly into the sun like that first shot, you need a really underexposed shot for that by comparison to the overall scene. I can see a lot more than 5 shots, and each greater than half an fstop. There are 3 primary lighted areas, the sun, the sea and the island. So you need a separate exposure for each of those. Your exposures so close together barely cover the sea and sky. Also color correction would help as well as some Shadow/Highlight in the pic you posted. The noise you can deal with as well as Unsharp mask.

 

[kevbrisrq]

Try 7 exposures - anything with sunlight I try to get at least 7 exposures - do them 1 EV apart - the .5 EV is not going to give you enough between exposures to get you the HDR your looking for. Practice makes perfect - and god knows I am not - I have learned the hard way by trial and error - sooner than not - you will start getting the hang of it!

 

[Compaq]

Don't get stuck on always exposing for the midtones and go a couple of stops down and up. Here's a technique for you that I picked up somewhere (might have been here) that is easy to do, and makes you understand what you're doing.

Blending exposures won't per definition create an HDR image. Tone mapping the image will enhance the local contrast in your image, thus reproducing the dynamic range in the original scene. If you want detail in shadows, midtones and highlights, you need to have correct exposures for those areas of the scene, as well as exposures for the stops in between. Before you take the exposures, find out where the brightest parts of your image are, and where the shadows are. Then make exposures with around 1EV apart all the way through. I like to use the live view with exposure simulation switched on and basically just choose my shutter speed from watching the screen. For a scene like this there might be a 9 stop difference between the brightest part of the scene to the darkest.
One tip is that when you do your over exposures, the shadows in those are midtones. This to minimize noise, which can be quite noticeable in HDR photography, especially at longer SS.

Ohh, try out Photomatix Pro.. You can use it free for as long as you like if you can live with a photomatix watermark in your photos. Or you can buy it for $100.