Natural Looking HDR

ok so do you load bracketed raws or do you turn them into jpegs first? and if i turn them into jpegs can i edit each to taste one or should i do a direct from camera conversion?
also how do you guys meter for the situation? i am usually a manual shooter, so to now use AV move got me thinking again.
thanks

Akrobatiks wrote in post #14343049
I blend all of mine manually using layer masks in Photoshop.

Hmm. OK. That rather changes what I thought I was getting from this thread. That's in no way a complaint or anything negative. The results speak for themselves. Just that I thought that these images were from the application of HDR tools and I was thinking of spending more time on learning the technique/tools as an alternative to blending.
Is that the case for other contributors ? If posters wouldn't mind mentioning the tools or techniques used, I for one would appreciate it. I'm sure others would too.

boerewors wrote in post #14346475
ok so do you load bracketed raws or do you turn them into jpegs first? and if i turn them into jpegs can i edit each to taste one or should i do a direct from camera conversion?
also how do you guys meter for the situation? i am usually a manual shooter, so to now use AV move got me thinking again.
thanks

hi, when you're using CS5, there is a a tool there where it says "Merge into HDR" and when you hit that button, it will then ask you to select the your bracketed photos be it RAW or JPEG. then the software will do its work. but the final result still seems a bit "unnatural" so what i do next is save the resulting file into TIFF then import it to LR3 for some more tweaking.

boerewors wrote in post #14346475
... also how do you guys meter for the situation? ...

Live histogram. Keep incrementing the shutter speed 'til the entire dynamic range is covered. Static scene and tripod best for this technique.

oldvultureface wrote in post #14346865
Live histogram. Keep incrementing the shutter speed 'til the entire dynamic range is covered. Static scene and tripod best for this technique.

hmm this sounds interesting. sounds like it can be done in manual mode by merely rolling the shutter speed wheel (on a tripod of course). i would trust this a hell of a lot more than going AV mode and getting screwed up metering for the zero exposure. thanks for sharing

ianxxxchua wrote in post #14346700
hi, when you're using CS5, there is a a tool there where it says "Merge into HDR" and when you hit that button, it will then ask you to select the your bracketed photos be it RAW or JPEG. then the software will do its work. but the final result still seems a bit "unnatural" so what i do next is save the resulting file into TIFF then import it to LR3 for some more tweaking.

whew, i had tried it before but the results look dog awful. its been a while though and i will start experimenting again.

boerewors wrote in post #14347132
... and getting screwed up metering ...

Yep. No need to even meter in the classical sense. Wouldn't do it with the sun in the frame, however, unless one covered the lens between exposures or the sun was low on the horizon.

boerewors wrote in post #14347138
whew, i had tried it before but the results look dog awful. its been a while though and i will start experimenting again.

The 'trick' I use is to try to get the output of the HDR to be very 'flat' looking. I do add some local contrast (with a local contrast filter), but definitely don't overdo it.

Then I make whole-image and more localized adjustments to bring back the macro contrast. This makes the image look realistic as opposed to just having the 'micro' contrast you see with overdone HDR images. If you look at the most natural-looking images in this thread, they all have a decent amount of large-scale contrast and dark areas in the image.

Also it is much harder when the scene DR is really huge. In that case I would suggest doing the HDR but not trying to recover all the shadow detail.

Sometimes some additional manual blending is necessary to eliminate halos.

Just as an example, in my shot above this is what the post-HDR image looks like, along with a 'default' processed raw from the shots that went in to the HDR so you can see the overall scene DR. Of course, this is somewhat of an easy example since halos were never going to be much of a problem.

boerewors wrote in post #14347132
hmm this sounds interesting. sounds like it can be done in manual mode by merely rolling the shutter speed wheel (on a tripod of course). i would trust this a hell of a lot more than going AV mode and getting screwed up metering for the zero exposure. thanks for sharing

yes its true that you can do it in manual mode by adjusting your shutter speed yourself. thats how some people "bracket" their photos with cameras without AEB.

the downside to adjusting your exposure for each shot manually is that, even if you use a tripod, by touching your camera, your set of photos will no longer be align due to your movements. also, if your scene was rapidly changing, you cannot manually adjust your exposures quick enough before want you want to capture changes or the exposure of the actual scene changes. this is usually apparent in cloud movements.

Hey Boerewors, maybe you should start a thread asking how people do their natural HDR's if you still have questions. I think it would be an interesting thread.

ThreeD23 Great shot! I love how natural your HDR's look!

HDR during the blue hour. I think this looks pretty natural when comparing to the original files. Used HDR Efex Pro. Anyone here use SNS-HDR? I heard so much good things about it...

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/boingyman/69806​26266/

ThreeD23 wrote in post #14348766

IMAGE LINK: http://www.fotos-hochladen.net

wholly Cow bells, thats fantastic control of DR. care to share how you got there?

mattmorgan44 wrote in post #14350382
Hey Boerewors, maybe you should start a thread asking how people do their natural HDR's if you still have questions. I think it would be an interesting thread.

ThreeD23 Great shot! I love how natural your HDR's look!

this thread is already the perfect place. perhaps i may request that anyone who posts their images to just include their zero exposure and a briefly state what methods they used, it will be great.

boerewors wrote in post #14347138
whew, i had tried it before but the results look dog awful. its been a while though and i will start experimenting again.

well if you have LR3, this might help you. it's an HDR plug in for LR3 though they're asking for some fee i think. never tried it though coz of the fee. here's the link http://www.oceanlight.​com …-for-adobe-lightroom.html

imjason wrote in post #14350201
yes its true that you can do it in manual mode by adjusting your shutter speed yourself. thats how some people "bracket" their photos with cameras without AEB.

the downside to adjusting your exposure for each shot manually is that, even if you use a tripod, by touching your camera, your set of photos will no longer be align due to your movements. also, if your scene was rapidly changing, you cannot manually adjust your exposures quick enough before want you want to capture changes or the exposure of the actual scene changes. this is usually apparent in cloud movements.

+1 on the downside but if you really have to be careful with your movements when the camera is on a tripod, i guess the software will adjust it for you later.