Playing with HDR

I decided to play with HDR since I have not tried it. The weather was not great in my opinion for HDR so I decided to shoot my daughter with her favorite friend. This is a bear she affectionately calls John Bear since it was given to her by a friend of ours called John. She has had this bear almost 7 years and still sleeps with him. He is missing one eye and has been a well loved bear.

Here is the three images in one to see what I was playing with. This was shot with a Canon 50D using a 50mm 1.4 shot wide open at 1.4. I think the exposure was still 30th of a second but my daughter was able to sit still enough for all three shots. The 50D will shoot them in succession if you set it to shoot off of a timer.

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getting photo unavail

sorry it was my fault I notice they all looked underexposed when uploaded so reloaded them. They should be fine now.

HDR is nice, but there is a fine line of looking nice and just over done.....but some people like that over done HDR feel. Your image looks nice...maybe cut back like 10%....but overall, not a bad attempt!

I would keep a few things from the HDR that look a little better (like the eyes and such), by masking, and then lower it until it looked more normal, but still added a little extra.

The first one you did looks the best of them though

Thanks for the input. Like I said I was not sold on it myself just wanted to play with the HDR not sure that portraits are the right application for it. I might try and do some different ones outside.

i think the processing is actually good, just your subject is way too cutesy for that look. Try it on something a little more gritty.

My taste tells me that first HDR is goos, second one is overdone. But again, its just MHO

Thanks guys I agree I will have to try it on her brother he is no where near as cute.

One thing I've found with HDR shots is that they look best when the actual dynamic range in the scene is WAY outside what the sensor can handle on its own. My first HDR attempt came out looking really flat, even though it was shot in midday sun with harsh shadows. It turned out that just compressing the dynamic range of the median image yielded a very nice exposure. The HDR attempt really wasn't extracting any more detail, it just made the detail that was there look flat.

Try doing it again with her heavily back-lit on a bright sunny day. Obviously don't blind yourself, but a bright sky behind her with her face in the shade should yield a better setup for that HDR "look"

I haven't actually bought Photomatix yet, so I can't post an example, but give it a shot - I think you'll be happy with the results. Even with a cute subject!