HDR waterfall. Ok, not really HDR

Hurricane Gustav blew threw Illinois last week and though we did not get the wind, we did get 4 inches of rain. Well, Illinois is not known for it's waterfalls, in fact about this time of year there are none. But 4 inches of rain wakes them up so I headed out to Starved rock for some pics.

I took bracketed sets intending to do a little HDR stuff but was very unhappy with Photomartix results and just as unhappy with Photoshops results. So I hand blended the three images basically creating my own HDR. Comments? Did it work?

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I like the second one a lot, and the first is fine, except for the blown highlights (water).

Well captured and processed John.

Very nice!

I live in Colorado now, but I grew up on a farm about five miles north of Starved Rock. Miles and miles of trails out there. Quite a few high school classes got skipped to hike around that park as well as Mathiessen Park which is just one mile south of Starved Rock.

very nice processing in both of em..

I like the 2nd image...

Avi

I grew up in Rockford, and we only got to this place once that I remember. It's pretty impressive. I like these shots. So why did Photmatix not do the job? What happened?

canonloader wrote in post #6270825
...So why did Photmatix not do the job? What happened?

Thanx for the comments all. As to why Photomatrix didn’t work well, I’m not exactly sure. The pic just didn’t look right. I can post up a sample of each and let you decide but to me it looked soft and artificial.

John, I'd like to see some examples. I have found a lot of things Photomatix is not good for, like birds, people and foliage in general, maybe green stuff in particular. But I'm still trying to get a handle on what does and does not work, as I hate wasting my time taking sets of shots that aren't going to work anyway.

I would think it would work for stone though, it seems to do good for buildings and brickwork.

Very impressive blending your own images, how long did it take?

canonloader wrote in post #6271219
John, I'd like to see some examples. I have found a lot of things Photomatix is not good for, like birds, people and foliage in general, maybe green stuff in particular. But I'm still trying to get a handle on what does and does not work, as I hate wasting my time taking sets of shots that aren't going to work anyway.

I would think it would work for stone though, it seems to do good for buildings and brickwork.

I'll post up a comparison tonight when I get home.

Nistelrooydude wrote in post #6271411
Very impressive blending your own images, how long did it take?

It didn’t take that long, maybe 20 minutes. I loaded them into a stack with the highlights as the top layer, then the shadows as the second and the neutral frame as the base frame. Then it’s a matter of removing the blown highlights from the top frame while keeping the shadows to bring out the underexposed areas. For the middle frame keep what was blown out in the top frame and remove the properly exposed areas. The base stayed untouched. It’s sort of like painting with exposures. Some areas needed to be removed all the way and others as some level less than 100%. It was interesting to see the image come out. Sort of like the old darkroom days when you put that paper into the developer and watched as the image appeared.

Great, I'll be looking for it.

I cropped out a few areas that I believe show the difference between the original and the PM'ed one. The pics on the left have been PMed the right from the composite. Both were generated from the same raw files and given about equal treatment.

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Very nice pics!

To me, it doesn't look consistant. The top right one looks better, with more detail, the bottom left one, while it has some noise, shows more detail, especially in the blacks and shadows. This is about what I've been finding with my use of PM. sometimes it works good, sometimes it doesn't. And it's almost impossible to predict ahead of time what it's going to do with a particular composition.