What went wrong?

Went to the park to take some Beautiful sunrise pictures..... FAIL

Canon 6D ii with a Canon 24-70mm f2.8 ii
using Auto Bracketing to merge later into an HDR

I shot at f22 to create the star look. Wondering if that is why my sky went away?
To get any of the sky in the HDR, I had to crank up every setting I could and it looks totally fake. Also, there is something going on with the tops of the trees that I'm not sure about.
I hardly ever do landscape but I've shot Sunsets with no issues, how many ways did I screw up here?

First shot is the HDR merge.
Second is just the .jpg out of camera

Did you only take one exposure?

Do you have a CPL?

You shouldn't have to go to 22 to get a star.

Only a UV filter. 3 exposures.

I must be doing the merge wrong.... this looks terrible. Full pic and 100% crop

Honestly, I should be able to hold the camera, snap a pic and get a really good shot. I have no clue how I screwed up SO bad...lol.

Here's one from my cell phone...

I have found that multiple exposure HDR works badly with trees. It's most noticeable on the edges. If there is any bit of breeze the leaves on the ends of branches will never be in register. The same goes for water that is not mirror-like calm.

Oh, and get rid of the UV filter. Use a hood for protection.

Samsung is doing the hdr "in camera".

If you want to Dropbox or google drive the images to me I'll look at them. Seems like you are pushing the files too hard before her processing. Fwiw, hdr is what it is, and I'm not really a fan. You might want to give EnfuseGUI a look.

I AM pushing them way beyond just so I can get the sky to show.
I just completely messed up when I took the pictures. I dont know if it was the f22 that killed the whole thing. I would think that would let more light in and get More of the detail....

Lens diffraction happens when you stop down too much. And f/22 is the least light you can let in.

If you are having to recover highlights then yeah, you didn't expose right. Your darkest file should have the sky exposed properly. The lightest exposure should have the darkest part of the trees exposed properly. Probably ~5-6 stops difference.

Auto HDR merging in LR sometimes sucks badly... even worse if your exposures and focus are not great.

I spoke wrong... I meant shooting at f22 would make for a longer exposure letting the sensor collect more detail in the image. Either way I'm wrong.

And the darkest file is the only one with Any sky in it but not much. I just failed miserably.
I will try again

[QUOTE=FarmerTed1971;1​8697954]Auto HDR merging in LR sometimes sucks badly... even worse if your exposures and focus are not great.[/QUOTE

I'm a poster child for "How bad can it get"...

:lol

But you have a great attitude.

Recover highlights 100 percent in the darkest file then reduce exposure until you see something. Leave the other files alone, unless the shadows in the lightest one are way too dark and do the opposite.

Don't mess with any other settings.

If that doesn't work. Go have a beer and watch some football.

I think the beer sounds like a better plan!!

I knew nothing about lens diffraction so my big idea of cranking the aperture started me on the path of no return. I'll just try another day.. .

You could possible snap one at f22 for the flare only and blend that in later.

To get a proper exposure range for a useful HDR merge I find my white and black points first then calculate my exposure needs from that. Here is what I mean;

• I first meter for the brightest part of the image (in your case it would be the sky) in order to get a proper exposure with plenty of detail. I make a note of that setting.
• I then repeat the process for the darkest part of the image (the trees in your case), again in order to preserve detail. I make a note of that setting as well.
• Taking those two settings I calculate my exposure range (how many stops the two settings are from each other) and I find the middle of the exposure range.
• Based on that calculation I'll set my camera's initial exposure to that middle number and determine if I need to bracket 3 or 5 frames in order to capture the full range.

Once you get into the routine of capturing your exposure range like this you will be guaranteed to capture the full range of a scene for future processing.

Of course there are other issues at play in your image that need to be considered. It was already mentioned about the leaves moving from frame to frame but I don't think that was the contributing factor to your issue here. What I see is a combination of pushing and pulling exposures beyond their useable range in order to keep them looking natural. When pushed to extremes colors tend to shift in luminosity, saturation and gamut. When those ranges are out of sync with each other when it comes time to tone map them and merge them in an HDR program it only exacerbates ghosting, fringing and haloing. In other words, the entire process is taking something that is flawed and amplifying those flaws.

My suggestion is to get back out there and practice getting good solid images in camera then see how that affects your workflow down the line. Keep in mind that for sunsets, colors look their best when the scene is underexposed a stop or two.