HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)

by Jourles 43 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Jourles

  the majority seemed to look awful with over-saturated, over-processed, grainy/noisy, and an almost painted/colorized appearance.

  It all depends on what the photographer wantsyou to see. When I see heavily post-processed, exteme grain/noise, etc in a picture, the first thing that comes to mind is - did they did it intentionally?(most likely, yes) You really have to ask the photographer what they had in mind when they took the shot. Regarding the cathedral photo just above, to me it looks impressive. It has a video game look to it. Sure it may not look *real* to some people, but to others it is just another form of art and expression. The photographer may have 5 different versions of that same picture. One of those versions might appeal to some, but not others.

  Would you mind if I asked your opinion on this photo?
• 

  Satanus

  Leo
  
  I like the 2 lower photos. They have a psychedelic look. 'Course, maybe a person who has never tried any psychedelics would not see it that way.
  
  S
• 

  Leolaia

  Yeah, if the intent is to create a surreal or stylish artistic creation, then I agree there is a niche for such processing. Not my taste of art (I guess I like photography that doesn't look like cartoons and has a subtler use of color), but surely someone else's. But I get the impression at least that some users are not intending to create this for art's sake, but as an improved or enhanced representation of the scene, such as some of the landscapes in Panoramio which are then uploaded to Google Earth as representative views of the indicated locations. A well-composed photo is appropriate for that use, but an artistic creation that is more the artist's impression is imho less suited for this. I also have to say that in Flickr, it looks like 95% or more of the use of HDR is this kind of gaudy over-processed result. That is great that so many people have found a creative use of HDR, but I would have thought to have seen more representation of the uses of HDR to, well, increase dynamic range to better capture what the eye actually sees. Such uses of HDR seem to be cmparatively rare.

  BTW, I really like your own scenic view on the first page. I think that succeeds quite well in improving the dynamic range and boosting the color tones w/o looking overly artificial.
• 

  tim hooper

  Some of those shots look very artificial. Still, each to their own!

  tim
• 

  Jourles

  Here's one I did last weekend of the local power plant:

  Shot this one just after dusk at 19mm @ f8. Exposure times varied of course since it was almost dark out. A less flattering view can be seen on the Wiki of this plant.
• 

  Leolaia

  Now that's more like it! You're getting good!

  Tell me, did you have to do a lot of nuanced tweaking in that example, or did it mostly fall out of the merge function? I wonder if your program handles the function better than Photoshop, but from what I hear, many good results depend on post-merge tweaking.
• 

  Jourles

  did you have to do a lot of nuanced tweaking in that example, or did it mostly fall out of the merge function?

  I used 3 shots for this one. -1.3, 0, +1.7. I've tried Photoshop CS3's hdr merge feature, but it tends to seriously jack up the alignment(you would think a $600 program could get this right). PS has done this with 4 different sets of images I've tried - so I know it's not the photos themselves. I'm sticking with Corel's PSP Photo X2. The only post-processing I did was brighten, sharpen, and crop. I zeroed out the Clarify which tends to give the photos that surreal look. Using Clarify on this image blured/faded the concrete seams on the smokestacks. It would have been easily noticeable.
• 

  Leolaia

  Well, I'm going to use the auto-brackering more often now. I don't have the goods yet to try this on the computer, but I'd rather capture the data now to play with later rather than miss the opportunity. I can think of lots of photos where I was disappointed by the inadequate DR (such as sunsets or photos with bright and dark regions that a graduated gray filter doesn't quite work).
• 

  Vivamus

  Jourles, your picts are AWESOME !
• 

  Jourles

  Leo,

  Don't forget(if your camera allows you) to keep the ISO and aperture the same, use a tripod, and set your white balance relative to 0.0. As long as these few items are set correctly, you should have some good shots to work with.

  Oh, and turn off any camera or lense vibration reduction and set your focus to manual so your camera doesn't accidentally hunt in autofocus mode between shots.