Advice for first attempts at HDR?

I've got some shots that I took on holiday, from which I'd like to create something half-decent. I think I need to be looking at HDR but I'd appreciate some advice from those with a little more experience.

Here are the two shots. The thing that bothers me is the difference in exposure: #1 was taken at 1/125th and #2 was at 0.3s (both f/8, ISO 200), so I make that over 5 stops of exposure difference. Is that too much to be able to combine using HDR? Is there a work-around? Any advice generally?

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no idea, but why not give it a try anyways...

having said that, dont you need an odd number of pics?

id try one 1 over, one regular and one 1 under for a starter. that way u get all the details in the dark areas and light areas. well, id rather have -2,-1, Normal, +1, +2 but 5 is bit too much for first try.

howzitboy wrote in post #3353685
id try one 1 over, one regular and one 1 under for a starter. that way u get all the details in the dark areas and light areas. well, id rather have -2,-1, Normal, +1, +2 but 5 is bit too much for first try.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Can you elaborate?

Let's say that an exposure half way between these two picture is "Normal". Then what I have is approximately -2.5 and +2.5. Are you suggesting I should do more RAW conversions to give me some intermediate exposures? For example if I do a conversion of #1 over-exposed by 1.5 stops and a conversion of #2 under-exposed by 1.5 stops, then I'd have a sequence of approximately -2.5, -1, +1, +2.5 ... would that work?

If you took both of those pictures at the same angle distance from the window you might be able to try something like this. This took 30 sec but if the pics were lined up the same it could look better

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mfreddo, that's exactly the sort of result I was looking for. How did you achieve it?

id guess layer mask and patience.

to get HDR read Mr.Robert Lay page (hope he dont mind my linking it):

http://www.zaffora.com​/W9DMK/UsingHDR.htm