First HDR Test

[teko]

First "successful" HDR attempt.

This wasn't a planned shot. Was just driving around with a friend and he had to drop by somewhere. I liked the sky color there, and he just washed his car the day before, so I decided to take some shots. It was originally shot in JPEG and hand-held.

I had a few more shots that had better trees/cloud/light reflections, but some of them don't align properly (camera shook between AEB shots). Hence this one is the only "successful" HDR attempt.



Post-processed in Photomatix Pro and Photoshop. Please criticize it. I'm sure it's still far from a good HDR shot.

[devin]

Looks pretty good lighting wise! My only real complaint is I think the background is less than flattering (the store and other cars on the right being particularly distracting).

[teko]

Please don't mind the subject and background so much. If I had the choice, I would rather photograph a better car at a better place .

I'm more worried about the lighting and brightness/contrast distribution. It seem the left side of the car (bottom right of the pic) is too dark for me. I haven't done much HDR merge and tonemapping before...

[danwiz]

I'm just wondering why you didn't post this in the existing hdr thread rather than start a new thread??? If you're less than pleased with this then why do you call it your first "successful" hdr attempt??

[Prospero]

The HDR looks good. The exposure is fine and the result looks natural. I agree that the composition could use some work, but the brightness/contrast and lighting are fine.

The picture does make me wonder how high the dynamic range of the scene really was. I think in this case you could have achieved the same result by editing a RAW file. That is not necesarily criticism, it's just that the editing a RAW file is often a much faster method. What did one of the shots you used as a source look like?

By the way, it may be possible tonallign the shots for the other pictures using a panorama program (I use PTGui myself). Programs like that use alligning algorithms that are a lot more advanced than the one used in Photomatix. You must use a panorama program that allows you to export each image separatly, though.

[TheWengler]

The picture does make me wonder how high the dynamic range of the scene really was. I think in this case you could have achieved the same result by editing a RAW file. That is not necesarily criticism, it's just that the editing a RAW file is often a much faster method. What did one of the shots you used as a source look like?

This is the only time I can get HDR to look natural. If the dynamic range gets too big then my HDR attempts start looking pretty bad.

[teko]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

I'm just wondering why you didn't post this in the existing hdr thread rather than start a new thread???

I did search for "HDR", but this forum's setting won't allow me to search 3-letters or shorter words.

If you're less than pleased with this then why do you call it your first "successful" hdr attempt??

If you read my story, it's because that's the only working set of the AEB that I took that day. "Successful" here is by no means "great", it's more of "did not fail". Sorry if it sounds misleading.

The picture does make me wonder how high the dynamic range of the scene really was. I think in this case you could have achieved the same result by editing a RAW file. That is not necesarily criticism, it's just that the editing a RAW file is often a much faster method. What did one of the shots you used as a source look like?

I didn't shoot RAW that day, which is to my regret. I will post the 3 exposures when I get back home.

[teko]

3 Exposures:



1. f/3.5, 1/30s, ISO 1800
2. f/3.5, 1/60s, ISO 800 (EV-2)
3. f/3.5, 1/15s, ISO 3200 (EV+2)