First Attempt at HDR. St Mary's Church Kracow

D. Craig Flory thanks for your suggestion although I do not have corel painter I am sure the effect would be very good

Thanks Monty I like that affect myself

Paul I am sorry to say have no sky left to play with, this is due to the converging verticals I had to sort via Photoshop, this in turn meant I lost some of the sky when I re-cropped the shot. You are right though with a bit more sky the shot would be much better. Thanks again for your kind words

Thanks I had a wee laugh to myself when I read your reply. I guess I was just lucky with how the shot worked in HDR, hopefully I can improve more of my images with this technique.

JT Firstly thanks for your comments I reall appreciate everyones feedback. To try and explain what I done with the shot, I had the original file that was shot as a RAW file, I opened the shot and adjusted the white balance and ensured the exposure was set to "0" opened the file and converted the shot to Jpeg, I re-opened the file in RAW and set the exposure to -1 and then again setting the exposure to +1 each time resaving the file as a jpeg. I then simply put the 3 shots into Photomatix and allowed it to do its stuff I adjusted the strengths a little until I was hapy with the result. I then re-opened the file in CS2 adjusted the hue/saturation, tweeked levels, sorted the converging verticals cropped then sharpened the image. What you see is the result of this :0 Hopefully this helps explain what I done to get the effect. If not let me know and I will try again.

Bluedog XT hopefully my explaination answers you question thanks for your comments

thanks lilmiss appreciate it

Ballioilman thanks mate, The colours look punchy enough on my monitor although it is far from being calibrated properly so that probably explains the difference. Hoping to get calibration software with some of the guys on here soon to remedy this

Thanks chander

[QUOTE]Ricky that looks great, the colours and final exposure are what make it for me. I have been playing around with HDR for weeks and I can't get anything close to this.

Did you extract a few images from one RAW in order to keep the people sharp?

Good work mate, however you got there....

John/[QUOTE] yes Jock thats how I done it After our discussion the other night re filters I thought my bank balance could do with a rest so rather than buying more kit I had a play with HDR and so far I like what I am getting I even had a play with some black and white images from Auschwitz which are pretty also

Thanks chaky12 appreciate you taking time to comment. If only I had my tripod with me I am sure the shot would be better but I had to settle with hand held. As I explain below by converting the one file you do not have to worry about blurred people Hope this helps?

Thanks again everyone for taking the time to comment I am away to play with more shots in Photomatix
Ricky

rickydiver wrote in post #2316375
JT Firstly thanks for your comments I reall appreciate everyones feedback. To try and explain what I done with the shot, I had the original file that was shot as a RAW file.....Hopefully this helps explain what I done to get the effect. If not let know and I will try again.

No need to explain again. That is exactly what I suspected you did. I've yet to figure out how to do a multi exposure HDR of a moving subject (other than water, of course). I'm sure it can be done, but would probably take some creative cropping before blending images.

Another thing I've been contemplating is a night and day HDR blend. Take a picture at night, leave the tripod and camara in position until the middle of the day and then shoot it again. I wonder how that would turn out? hmm...

Ricky even though you did an excellent job on your technique, I've done quite a few myself and this method isn't considered an HDR. Basically you could have adjusted the exposure with in a single RAW file and saved as a tiff then applied the tone mapping in Photomatix.

Ok Bluedog XT if its not classed as High Dynamic Range what exactly is it classed as ? Cause I am confused
Ricky

The shot looks low in contrast, like all hdr attempts.

You will not be an HDR fan then Hellashot

Hellashot wrote in post #2316465
The shot looks low in contrast, like all hdr attempts.

I disagree with that comment. Not all HDR images look low in contrast.

very nice!! good job!

rickydiver wrote in post #2316461
Ok Bluedog XT if its not classed as High Dynamic Range what exactly is it classed as ? Cause I am confused
Ricky

Well actually its classed as Low Dynamic Range for the simple reason you can achieve the same amount of post processing in a single conversion vs the three RAW edits (from a single file) you used to achieve this. By no means am I saying your results aren't good.

This copied from the Photomatix website: heres the direct link just scroll up and down the page for more info.

"Can't I just create the exposures from one RAW file?

Not really. Your RAW file contains data captured by the sensors for only one exposure. The total dynamic range you can reconstruct from one photo converted with different exposure settings can never be more than the dynamic range captured by your camera, and this is rather limited.
When you are using only one exposure to capture the scene, your RAW file is already your HDR image.
Converting the RAW file to images with different exposure levels is a bit like slicing the dynamic range of the RAW into several parts. Combining back the parts into an HDR image will at best re-produce the dynamic range of the initial RAW file.
"

Thanks Zacker appreciate that

Ok BluedogXT but having used the software and created it via the HDR button then I used the tone mapping button I presumed that it was an HDR file, wrongly it appears Either way I like the shot

Ricky

You're right to like the shot.

Maybe next time you should yell "FREEZE" and snap 3 shots.

Thanks Cre@te I think I will jump back on the plane to Poland and do just that, it will then make it a "real HDR" shot LOL
Cheers Ricky

'Real' HDR or not, it looks great and that's all that matters!

nice work!