Haddon Hall Chapel HDR

Still a bit OTT, but as far as I can see at least aligned!
[IMG]http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff250/johnriley1uk/004-Haddon-Chapel.jpg[/IMG]

I love this style of pictures. You got it right this time.

I like the toning and feel. You can feel that the chapel is old. Well done.

No offense meant here but I thought with HDR the goal would be to have the windows well exposed as well - unless of course you wanted the effect you have? How did you do this one? Multiple exposures in camera or multiple developments of one RAW shot?

Mike

How are you setting up you shots John?

I use x5 exposures on AV mode at f/11 and then again at f16 shot in RAW. (Shoot at ISO 100 and again at ISO 200) Above 200 introduces to much noise).

The import into Photomatix, If you have used a tripod all the shots should be aligned no need to have this checked and also un-check the movements also as nothing is in motion.

Reset everything back to defaults as Photomatix loads up with the previous settings used.

For subtle HDR set the top two sliders to 70 (strength and saturation)
Set Light smoothing to High.

Now see what your White and Black points are set to.
Increase the Black point to 2% and review. (Adjust to taste)
Increase White point to 1% and review. (Adjust to taste)

This changes the contrast in the HDR range But keep a watch on the Histogram to make sure you are not causing any clipping.

The other sliders and buttons you can leave as is as you can do further PP in Photoshop with greater control.
However if you want to go for Hyper Realism feel free to adjust the other sliders and buttons. (each image requires different settings).

In Photoshop:

Make your crop.
Apply a small amount of overall capture sharpening.
Setup Threshold adjustment for white and black points.
Set your levels adjustment.
Add Contrast adjustment.
Add Huesaturation adjustment.

That's the basics sorted out now you can begin adding in different exposures or sculpting the Midtone contrasts (I use LucisArt for this) but you can manually gain the same with subtle dodgeburn and vivid light around 3% with airbrush).

Once you are happy with your image Select all Layers, Copy all and paste in.

Sharpen image to taste, I use High pass filter method with masking.

The above is my basic workflow and I hope this helps some what.

Regards,

Gary.

Gary I don't know about John but from me thanks for that which I'll try next time I want HDR as it looks like a very clear recipe for HDR.

Mike

Gary nice workflow - but I have to disagree with some of your settings.

I think you have a very high saturation and stregnht for natuaral looking pictures. I use very similar settings and get saturated results (see the photo section).

Regarding the strenght - changing this will change the light in the picture. So I play around with this setting all the time to see the difference in the light. I only set it to high if I have to avoid halos - as the strenghr button will remove these (almost).

Regarding the numbers of exposures - I tend to use 3 with 2 ev spacing if I want a high contrast picture and 5 shots for higher dynamic range. It all depends of the shot and intention. I always shot 5 shots - just in case.

The F-value is controlled by the DOF I want.

Just my input - but a very good workflow you have described.

Just as a matter of interest would you guys have taken one shot with the correct exposure for the very bright window at the end or do you always have evenly spaced increments in EV?

Mike

Your Aperture will sort out the basic exposure for overall with Pattern metering.

Bracketing with 2 ev spacing, with x5 exposures you will hit the correct exposure for highlights and shadows.

That around 10 stop difference + & - 5 so your get your high dynamic exposure range.

Reducing to x3 exposures you have less dynamic range to use.

For HDR I always use matrix mode. I use whatever the camera suggest as my "middle" shot.

I then take multiple shots with a different shutterspeed but with the same F-value (important). (eg 5 shots like this -2, -1, "0", +1, +2 or -2,6; -1,3; "0", +1,3; +2,6)

The spacing is always (consistent) the same - but sometimes i use 1 or 2 - or even 1,3 or 0,7 as spacing. It all depends on what you want, what contrast you want and so - and you only learn by experience.

We're getting some good info here, many thanks to all!

I've shown some of my hdr in the picture forum.

I honestly don't understand why you want to super-impose different shots when you can just shoot 1 correct exposure in RAW and then save 1-2-3-5 a million differently exposed (yet exactly the same image) images.
All this workflow only complicates things as you will always move the camera from one shot to the other. I will never rely on the camera's AV mode read of a scene over a different period of time.

Light changes, and as much as camera meters are very accurate, I will not rely on it to give me a 'fixed' measure of +/- 1 EV stop, never on different exposures! (So even if i was to shoot 5 different exposures, I'd either go for the bracket shot or simply do it in manual).
Still its easier to do it in RAW and on a nice computer screen. (ANyway HDR is such a strong manipulation that there are no excuses for NOT processing the image in RAW converter!!!!

Nice shot John, I think its too bright, and also too harsh of an HDR, but this is only my opinion. I love the foreground, and I think you should crop the top a bit, and maybe use a 1 stop lower exposure.

Cheers, Nathan

Early days yet and just a few images that I had on hand, not necessarily shot with HDR in mind.

I'm absorbing all this info and soon I'll be going out to shoot some images for the purpose.

Because 1 RAW shot will have a dynamic range of about 7 stops maximum (that's in the RAW file itself). That's not enough for difficult situations. You still need multiple RAW files.
Added to that, when you push a RAW file too hard you rake up a pile of crud from the noise floor that's present

My take is this: 5 shots, 2Ev apart (K10D is ideal as it can do it automatically). Shoot in RAW, process the middle shot - get the colour, white balance etc right, but leave alone exposure, contrast, etc. Then duplicate the settings to the other 4. Export as 16-bit TIFF preferably and then merge in an HDR app and tone map.

Not difficult, not complicated - just needs a shed load of RAM
Matt

Personally, I've found 'Exposure Blending' in Photomatix Pro 3 produces superior results to HDR + Tone Mapping.

Anybody tried it?

Well mainly because that is not a HDR image. Thats is just a tonemapped raw file. It can look very good, but will limit your results.

HDR can only be achieved by mulitiple shots.

I use the tonemapping on moving subjects. It looks good - no question about it, but it is just a PP technich like dodge or burn or similar.