C&C: First attempt at HDR

I saw this old mailbox on the way to shooting today, thought I would shoot it as an HDR, since it has that old look already, and loads of detail. Maybe I went a little overboard with 7 shots, but here is the final result anyway:

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Sorry, I am very new to photography. I will not give any feedback, will rather ask question. Why would you do HDR for this shot? Will it not be OK to think on a single exposure? Just curious...
Take it easy!

The reason I did the HDR was that I didn't have a flash with me. So in order to make the sky and the mailbox exposed properly, I figured the HDR technique would be perfect.

I can see where the brightness of the snow and the darkness of the mailbox would create a situation with a wider dynamic range than what you could capture in a single image. I think that two or three shots would have been sufficient. A couple suggestions for improving the image would be to bring the luminance of the snow down because it appears to be completely blown out. Likewise, the black level on the mailbox could be lowered somewhat. The main technical problem with respect to HDR in this scene is that besides the sky, there is not much in the mid-tone region.

It appears that you may not have used a tripod. The reason that I say this is that there is a smearing of the background features such as the tree. When the HDR algorithm merges images, it will attempt to match the sharpest edges which in this case is the mailbox. If the camera moved slightly between shots, the position of the background will be different in each shot and after the merging process, can create the smeared effect. The same thing can even happen if the camera IS mounted on a tripod, but is very close to the foreground subject ... in which it only takes very slight motion due to wind or camera vibration caused by mirror slap.

I was going to suggest the same thing bill, that is before I noticed your responce.

I am curious about what conversion software was used as CS3 usually does a pretty good job of allignment.

chauncey wrote in post #5219828
I was going to suggest the same thing bill, that is before I noticed your responce.

I am curious about what conversion software was used as CS3 usually does a pretty good job of allignment.

It appears to me that the mailbox in the foreground has good alignment. However, if there is slight camera movement, parallax differences between two shots means that background objects will not appear in the same relative position to the mailbox and, therefore for such a case, it is not possible to align both foreground and background objects.

You guys are right, no tripod and PS CS3 Automation to align the images. Next time I'll try with a tripod... I was not really expecting to take this shot today, it just happened, and I only had the camera with me.

Maybe I'll go back tomorrow with what I have learned today and get a better exposure.