Let me say this first: I am not a big fan of colour HDR shots.
I don't really do them and quite often I find what other people do with them to be garish but I did realise yesterday that my stream here was looking a little monochromatic (not necessarily a bad thing and it certainly fits my mood and the dreary weather we seem to be stuck with right now) and that, coupled with the update to Photomatix 4.2 (a big improvement in speed, looks, and features), persuaded me to try one for a change. So this is a three shot (-4/3, -2/3, 0 EV), handheld (in windy conditions) HDR from the Bishop's Palace Garden in Chichester with Photomatix set to remove ghosts in one of the new soft presets, slightly adjusted.
Google+: View post on Google+
May 17, 2012
Great natural HDR +Mark Hooper
May 17, 2012
this is a perfect sample of the correct eye-friendly using of hdr 🙂
May 17, 2012
HDR to my mind should always provide a natural view if what we can see with our eyes, not outlandish glowing edges etc. yours is a good example of natural HDR just extending the range of what we can usually capture.
May 17, 2012
At last – an HDR shot that doesn't introduce bizarre colours and textures that weren't there! 🙂 You win… something, not figured out what yet 🙂
Anyone buying Photomatix for the weird tone mapping presets should first be first to sit through a lesson on what dynamic range actually means…
May 17, 2012
I've never tried HDR it seems like what drop shadows were 15 years ago. Although there are some black and white hdr shots I've liked, I wouldn't go out of my way to try and replicate the look since I'm satisfied with how RAW Developer treats my photos and converts b&w.
May 17, 2012
Not bad. Looks plausibly natural enough to me – did it really need it apart from the cloud in the background? 🙂
May 17, 2012
+Tim Haynes No, it didn't really need it but when has that ever been an impediment to trying anything?
May 17, 2012
+Mark Hooper Oh, absolutely. In any case, while you've not exploited it for dynamic range retention, you have gained the ability to consider it as two [0] images stacked on top of each other (gives a signal:noise ratio improvement equivalent to a stop of ISO) and super-resolved – the sub-pixel alignment issues between handheld frames mean you can upscale it a bit in RAW conversion and the pixels will slot in between each other for greater resolution. I'm a great believer in having a natural-looking HDR workflow just so I can use it for those factors anyway. 🙂
[0] an average of one correctly exposed image, plus the average of two deliberately differently exposed.
May 18, 2012
This is great. I am not a fan of HDR either but only because some overdo it. This one is just right I think.