HDR setting or exposure bracketing

Is there a significant difference in using the HDR setting (K5) compared to exposure bracketing + HDR software?

I find that the HDR setting gives what are to me rather unnatural looking results. On the other hand dusk and night shots of city lights are more successful. For daytime shots I find that exposure bracketing + HDR software gives you much more control over the output and enables you to avoid the 'HDR' look which can be tiresome after the initial novelty has worn off.

7 exposures using the same aperture and then Photomatix. It doesn't have to look wildly unrealistic either.

The technique is especially well suited to architectural subjects such as church interiors. The brightest windows and darkest corners can all be succesfully combined into the one shot.

If you wish to avoid unnatural results with Photomatix, use the 'Fusion' setting instead of 'Tonemapping'. With careful controls applied, resulting images can look very natural, with impressive dynamic range.

Regards
David

I have been using a package called Zoner which is a sort of PSE clone from Eastern Europe. It seems to have a very good exposure merging and tonemapping facility which offers quite a lot of control and I have been pleased with the look of the resulting images. My previous attempts at HDR church interiors has been using the inbuilt HDR facility in the K5 which were not in my eyes quite as successful.

Last week I took some bracketed exposures in a German Cathedral ( 3x 2ev) , but I realise that I should have gone beyond three exposures - certainly 5 and maybe 7 as John Riley suggests. I have had no problem aligning 3 handheld images but wonder whether 7 would require a tripod.

7 would really need a tripod.

If you shoot in raw you can cheat and use ACR to made 3 separate exposures and then blend in you chosen software. Not ideal but can work if you couldn't make the exposures in camera.

You can but given the K-5's wider than most dynamic range when shooting RAW does that really help? Even with Photomatix you can load a single RAW image. Does reprocessing the RAW file into 3 separate exposures and blending them add anything that processing the RAW file without doing that achieves? I can't see that it can do.

John

Not had the K-5 for very long so not had much experience there. Never had much luck with photomatix but found that blending the separate exposures in Photoshop playing with the blend modes and opacity (and masks) can lift a shot.I didn't realise Photmatix accepted one file and perhaps Photoshop's HDR will work with one shot now but I haven't tried. Just blended images they way I know.

John, In answer to your question above, my experience is 'yes' it does. If you load a single file into Photomatix you can only access Tonemapping functions, not the Fusion options. The Fusion process is best for expanding dynamic range and does significantly enhance a RAW file that has been processed into 3 or more separate exposures. There are probably other ways of processing a single RAW file to get results that approach the Photomatix process, but I don't know how to do this to the same effect.

Used carefully, Photomatix is excellent software and can transform images.

Regards
David

This is a photo taken last August. The first rendition is the jpeg from the camera just reduced to 800 pixels wide for the forum.




Next the same image from the single RAW file tonemapped in Photomatix.




I was quite surprised how much detail has emerged from the dark woodland area on the left. And it made the sun come out too - perhaps I could have transformed today's weather!

I wasn't thinking HDR when I took the shot (really it was just a record picture during a hike I was doing) so didn't take an in camera HDR shot or three+ intentional shots for PP. I doubt whether they would have made much difference though.

John

It's a lovely photo John and a great result. Perhaps you could try exposure adjusting the RAW file(-1, 0, +1 stops), process it again and post it here for us to see if there is any difference? It would make an interesting comparison.

Regards
David

I'll give it a go tomorrow.

John

I had quick go at comparing Photomatix using just 1 raw file and then split the file to 3 different exposures, to be honest they don't look that different then I did what I often do and blended them in PS manually admittedly not as good as not really HDR.

The photo I used was one I took one dull evening on my way to work and I didn't use any I took that day they didn,t work out. Just used as an example here still not what I wanted but shows the differance that can be made.

The original photo just converted from raw to jpg



Image made just putting the raw file into Photomatix




This one was done using the same raw file but 3 different exposures made from it in Photomatix



This one was blended from the same 3 exposures manually in Photoshop




So I apologise John I hadn't realised Photomatix could do from one file and my blending in PS doesn't look like HDR.