HDR Imaging.. post yours?

Just barely tried my hand at this.. Hell, I hadn't even used the bracketing on my camera before now. I have to say.. TONS of fun.





I downloaded a trial of HDR Effex Pro. pretty easy to use, good results. I did a google search for "HDR" and was very impressed.. but the more I looked, the more a lot of them looked the same to me. Seems like people go saturation crazy when doing these. Also.. for obvious reasons, it's mostly landscapes or cityscapes. I went the other direction. I'm a HUGE fan of HDR photos that are desaturated/ a little noisy. Still has that pop and detail though. A couple of my better ones so far below:





My daughter Emily. Had to play "red light, green light" with her to get three exposures close to being in the same neighborhood. heh. After two takes she was done so I was left with this as the best possible candidate.


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Took this at the coffee shop today. I was going to take a shot of the chair against the brick wall to play with it some more when one of the employees walked by. Made her sit for a minute. :)


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I would love to see what you guys have come up with.. also any advise or tips/tricks you've discovered along the way.





-Richard

Welcome to the neighborhood.


I like your two here. I have only played a little with it. its fun to play with. Looks great for some shots.


Mark

Hi Rocco. There are several threads somewhere on the forum dedicated to HDR...but I can't find them at the moment. Buried somewhere! I really like the shot of the little girl covering her face...tells a story! To get a 3 shot bracket of that pose is incredible! I have done quite a bit of HDR myself, and hopefully now that the Christmas season is over(my busiest time of the year(I'm a full time UPS driver...whew!)), I plan to get out and take more shots!!


Here are a few that I've taken in the recent past...


Trip to Italy in Sept-Oct...Archway next to the Collisseum(5 shot HDR)


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Wedding Cake Monument(don't remember the real name!!)


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And my Favorite...the Colosseum at night(5 shot HDR with 1D4 and Nikon 14-24G/adapted)


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They can be really fun, and don't let people discourage you. A lot of people say it's not photography...but photography is art, and if it pleases you, then have a go!!


Here is a great site that I just found that explains a lot on HDR. And he has some EXCELLENT shots, that look very real!! www.thehdrimage.com


Cheers


Gregg

Wow, thanks for the link. I like how he uses HDR for it

Hi Rocco....


As a matter of fact it is. A 5 shot HDR during midday as we were walking by the monument. Taken with 1D4 and 24-70L. If you look very closely, you can see what looks like 3 birds in flight near the upper middle left...that is actually the flight of 1 bird. The 1D4 has the option to do from 3-7 bracketed shots...and 10 frames per second, which makes for hand-holdable bracketing(sometimes!!).

HA. I didn

Man, those are nice. That Effex program is lookin' better and better. I wish it was a little cheaper or had a discount thing going on. Spent my last $179 on CS5 as my 4.0LE was feelin' a bit dated. I really like your girl's picture. The only thing I might add to it would be in the blank/empty spots on the left where the noise isn't "deep" enough. The way she had her eyes covered reminded me of storytime when I was a kid and someone reading a Halloween "step-step-drag" type of thing. I can see an open book shot from the lower left paragraph (maybe have the camera set 30 degrees up with the scary text in the depth of field) and have that pasted to the left of the girl in Hard Light or sumthung. While the only books I have right now are Grief Observed and a Flash guide, which neither of these are age appropriate (college is expensive enough without adding cameras and flashes to kids' vocabulary), I do have some brick pictures. I know it's not really the same, but I put it in there to give you an idea of maybe what I'm talking about. I'm not real crazy about how it turned into a concentration camp feel with the brick texture. It's an idea anyway and the first one is usually just a starting block for something better and potentially brilliant. Sorry for ramblin'.. Had to pick up Salazar's slack:)


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This is kind of cheating because it is a tone mapped single image, But I kinda liked the results.


http://rwilliamsimaging.com/img/s1/v19/p581630334-4.jpg

Hdr Efex from NIK software is what I now use for all my HDR

Hi Bob...


I think that is a great representation of a pseudo-hdr. Good tones and contrast throughout. What program did you use?


Here are 2 examples of what I described above in previous post about using Photomatix vs HDR Efex...A beach scene with lots of colorful sky and foreground colors. Let me know what you think. Taken with 1D4 and 16-35 2.8ll. Of course there are going to be different depending on the method used(HDR Efex has so many diff ways to create), but this is a general representation between the two.


Photomatix version


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HDR Efex Version


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This is a nice little portrait shoot I did with my Uncle's girlfriend and her two dogs. What do you all think?


http://freshphotohawaii.zenfolio.com...57736946-3.jpg


Also, I took this one of my mom playing pool yesterday... she asked for this pose ;) haha!!!


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Gregg,


Do you manage to get ghost birds in all of your hdr? :P Looks great. I have both Photomatix and HDR Efex as well. Haven

Jordan,


I LOVE those. Especially the first. I have decided that most of my HDR will be portraits. I love how surreal it looks. Somehow it looks MORE dynamic when using it with people. HOW did you get the dogs to sit still? Are you like Gregg with a 1D4? (still counting down the days for my new body.)

thanks Rocco,


The only thing about portraits is that the skin sometimes looks weird if you aren

The 7d is the camera I

well Rocco,


The EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM is a GREAT lens... I am trying to sell mine though because I want to convert to all FF lenses, because my next camera will either be a 1.3x or 1.0x camera... so I want two focal lengths for all my lenses.... Otherwise, I

Hi Rocco.


It seems that in the few examples, I have BIF in my HDR's!! Funny! As far as the bracketing goes, yes the 1D can go up to 7 bracketed shots, and you can do 2, 3, 5, or 7 shots. I think the Nikon's can do up to 9...I think.


I also think the 17-55IS is a great lens to have for the crop bodies. It will greatly help having IS to handheld shots, of all kinds, including HDR's. Most of my wide angle HDR's now are done with my 1D4, and I use a Nikon 14-24G(adapted). I think IMHO, that it blows my old 16-35ll away. Especially in the corners! Here is an HDR from Lucca, Italy, taken with said combo, processed in HDR Efex. I was in a tower, and this shot was taken through an opening in the tower. Unfortunately, I did have a little movement(if you look closely at the tower in the distance)


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by greggf

Hi Bob...


I think that is a great representation of a pseudo-hdr. Good tones and contrast throughout. What program did you use?


Here are 2 examples of what I described above in previous post about using Photomatix vs HDR Efex...A beach scene with lots of colorful sky and foreground colors. Let me know what you think. Taken with 1D4 and 16-35 2.8ll. Of course there are going to be different depending on the method used(HDR Efex has so many diff ways to create), but this is a general representation between the two.

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Thanks Greg, I used HDR EFX Pro--Like you and some others, I do own Photomatix as well, but haven't even opened it since I got EFX.


I Definitely Like the second one better--Nice Job.


Bob

Shot this with a canon point and shoot back in 2005. First HDR image I ever attempted.


canon power shot A40 11mm, f/4, 1/50 sec


2011©ThomsBlackford,TrindPhotography


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This is a 5 shot HDR of my brother's dining room ... 1DMKIII + Sigma 8-16mm + Tripod ... processed with Photomatix Pro





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