Post Your Best HDR Photo

[David Selby]

For you HDR masters out there...


I'd like some advice on this particular shot...











My question is, i shot this in raw with a 50d... Do you think this shot could benefit from HDR technique? I hate the soft cgi appearance.. . i'd do it only to increase details. any thoughts or advice?

[John]

David,





First of all, nice shot of Atlanta, a classic angle on my favorite city.





Night shots are kind of a favorite of mine.


My recommendations would be to shoot it right after sunset through until its totally dark. I always try to get some color in my skies, usually a nice dark blue, or sometimes purple, etc. Depending on how bright the sky is, you could use a kind of HDR to blend the various exposures. I would also shoot several shots in a row of the same exposure to get a variety of car trails on the road below, and then blend them in photoshop using "lighten" mode to get a good amount of car light trails on the road. Finally I would probably shoot using f22 or so to get some nice star points on those lights, but that's a personal preference.





Hope that helps.

[Michael James]

Ocean is way too rough to shoot I'm back.


John, I love that shot! Where is that? East coast sunset or west coast sunrise?


And I got an email message about what my website is, but I can't figure out where I'd see that here on the site. So anyway... I don't have my latest work up yet because I've been too busy shooting/editing, but it is:


http://www.digitalcoastimage.com


I really need to pull some older shots off and update them with my newer work which is getting better as I refine my workflow.

[Michael James]

After looking at your shot again John I realized I'm probably wrong on both fronts. The angle of that sun in relation to the shore line has me unsure where it could have been taken.

[peety3]

For you HDR masters out there...


My question is, i shot this in raw with a 50d... Do you think this shot could benefit from HDR technique? I hate the soft cgi appearance.. . i'd do it only to increase details. any thoughts or advice?
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What were your initial settings? I suspect one of the issues could be diffraction because of too small of an aperture. According to Bryan, cameras with a pixel spacing as tight as the 50D's are limited to sharp shots at f/7.6 and larger.

[John]

Thanks Michael. The location is Kiawah Island, SC...a "sunset", or almost there.

[Dennis Evertse]

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Sorry for the big &copy; on the picture, but its nessecary on some forums I come... []

[Michael James]

In case anyone doesn't know... in Photomatix, if you are having trouble getting a photo to bring out some of what was a brighter area of the sky, there is a way to bring that back gently. Under the S/H tab the top slider "Highlights Smoothing". If you drag that slider to the right it will begin to brighten the areas that were brightest in the over exposed images.


You'll find that after doing so you might want to return back to the main sliders to retweak. Each image is different. That slider may show no results until the final section on the right or it might start lightening spots with just a small move to the right. But it is there and quite useful if you haven't touched it before.

[40Doodle]

I had never heard of this whole HDR thing and have to say that I like the images shared in this thread very much. I can't get into pixel counting with anyone or debating what HDR is or isn't, but I know what I like and this stuff is very cool. It doesn't have to be done to every photo and I wouldn't want to do that, but these pics are terrific IMO.


Hat's off to all of you who shared your creations! I downloaded the Photomatix trial-ware and gave it a run on some of my own photos. I took 4 photos of the same subject that varied in exposure from 2 to 3 exposure settings. Tried all 4 in Photoshop CS4 using the Photomerge capability and then took the same photos over to Photomatix. The Photomatix results were much better than what Photoshop produced. These photos were not intentially taken to use in an HDR method, so the results in both applications were nothing to share here, but I was able to see what Photomatix could do and it was pretty cool.


Thanks all for sharing your knowledge and the great pics.


Rick

[Jeff]

Jeff, the lighting on this is tremendous. If you hadn't told me it was HDR based, I wouldn't have known. I tend to prefer staying away from surreal looks with tonemapping and to keep it as real as possible. This is a gorgeous image!
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Thank you. Granted, I could have used a fill light, but with it being about 25 degrees with wind (this photo is totally deceiving when it comes to warmth lol) I just put it on the tripod and took 4 shots and merged them. I am very happy with the results. I'm also a fan of more realistic HDR images.