first attempt at bracketing

just what the title says. let me know what you think. I know the location is bad. this was more of a test shot so I can figure out how the heck to bracket. im not a fan of hdr at all. but, I do like the fact of everything being exposed. so I guess im going for a more "natural" hdr look? if that's at all possible?

How many exposures did you bracket?

Maybe it would help seeing the 2-3 pictures you bracketed from?

I wanna say 6 or 7. I can't remember.

From what I understand and have read, bracketing is just the camera taking a extra photos at different exposures based on your initial setting. One photo at a "higher" exposure and one photo at a "lower" exposure from the original. The photos aren't spliced together or overlaid, they are individual photos and you select the best exposed. I don't know enough about HDR to know if bracketing is used to create HDR. I tried bracketting when I was learning to meter and use manual exposure. It didn't really help me much.

i think you have achieved your goal of having it look pretty natural. Experienced photogs can usually spot a HDR image whether it is over cooked or not, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is if it meets YOUR criteria.

Is that the sun peeking through in the center of the frame on the horizon?

I think this is fairly well done. I'd try to crop out the vignetting or see if I could correct it out, but that's just my taste. The overall exposure may be about half a stop under.

Larry Johnson wrote in post #17406957
From what I understand and have read, bracketing is just the camera taking a extra photos at different exposures based on your initial setting. One photo at a "higher" exposure and one photo at a "lower" exposure from the original. The photos aren't spliced together or overlaid, they are individual photos and you select the best exposed. I don't know enough about HDR to know if bracketing is used to create HDR. I tried bracketting when I was learning to meter and use manual exposure. It didn't really help me much.

The camera creates individual photos and, within software, you "splice" together the best exposed portions of each photo. Basically, you would import as layers > align layers > layer mask or run an automated merge function.

You are somewhat correct Larry. Bracketing is taking a number of exposures of the same photo. Definately not limited to 3. But I just got photomatix. It's an HDR software. I upload all of the different exposure shots and it puts them into one photo for me. Then I edit and move to lightroom to edit more. Bracketing is used to get the most detail in every part of the photo. Instead of having a blown out sky and properly exposed foreground or a properly exposed sky and underexposed foreground. This way you can have both.

Left handed brisket yes it is. This was taken just before sunset.