HDR HELP PLEASE

Hello every one what’s the best way or how do you get the best results on using the HDR mode on the pentax KX and K7 or do I go full manual? or do I stick to the HDR mode as strong on the camera can you help I know you can lol

When i first got my K7, I played around with the in-camera HDR, but I have to say I did not persevere for long. I found quite a lot of fringing around high contrast edges, and, being a jpeg file, there's not much you can do about it in Photoshop without degrading the image. You also have no input to how the image will look after processing-it's just a case of pressing the button and seing what comes out. It did work a bit better at the weakest setting, but I have got much better results by taking bracketed RAW files and using Photomatix, where you can adjust the final image before it's processed. The in-camera HDR is a nice gimmick, but not much more than that. Saying that, it can sometimes give quite pleasing results with low contrast scenes.

When shooting for HDR, I tend to use five bracketed exposures one stop apart with the camera set to take the five shots on one press of the shutter. I then process it in Photomatix. The final picture being a 16-bit TIFF, there's also more latitude for tweaking the picture afterwards if I still am not happy with it.

thanks aliengrove that does help thanks again

There are loads of sites and info on the web although some of it looks horrible to my mind!...here is a reasonably good site;

http://captainkimo.com/hdr-how-to-guide

Thanks for the link viewfinder!
Andy

I usually combine 7 exposures using Photomatix, but HDR is something that doesn't really suit many images IMHO. If it's overdone it can quickly get OTT.