My First HDR

well i finally decided to give this a try. i have one question for the pros of HDR tho. How do you get your image to be so crisp? when i tried this i did 4 pics, high, low, medium and original, yet it came out so noisy. Tips, anc c & c needed lol please.

what ISO did you shoot at?

iso 100

Did you take four different pictures or did you just modified one in raw mode exposure compensation before using merge HDR ?

i cheated and used a raw.
is it better to do the whole 1 stop thing?

I asked the question because the canoe looked pretty sharp for a 4 picture bracketing even in burst mode. This is certanly a technique you can use if yo have only one raw to work with.

I'm no expert at this but I think,
you need a still subject and a tripod if you want a neet HDR.
Even with a very fast burst mode like 20D or 30D.

Bingo!

hmm... I think you would have better results trying to do this with Exposure Comp Bracketing. The whole idea behind HDR is to capture more information than the sensor is capable of. If you attempt to use the RAW method, you are still limiting yourself to the original information captured by the sensor. If you bracket correctly, you can extend this range.

HOWEVER - that method would never work with a moving boat!

Well i did some attempts at HDR with no trip pod, hand held using the self timer. I used a rock as support. But the whole deal of HDR is multiple exposure levels of the same image. So the only moving objects usually spotted in HDR photos are Water and Clouds.

What you made was not a true HDR. Using one file and changing the exposure levels is a "almost" HDR. Like stated before, you are not getting the full dynamic range of the scene. Moving subjects make for bad HDR's or at least very tuff to make HDR's. Bracket shooting or manually shooting multi stop shots is the only way to almost get the full dynamic range of the scene. You really need to do it on a tripod to ensure a crisp result.