K3 Auto HDR +

Example of Pentax in camera auto HDR with a few post processing tweaks in Lightroom.
Castle Howard - North Yorkshire

I can't see any need for HDR here, or at least no noticable increased DR.

Do you have a straight shot also to compare that we could see?

If you look at the histogram, there are relatively few burnt out pixels. If a single shot had been taken and exposed so that the building looked pretty much as the above shot, there might be large burnt out blobs where the tree lights are.

I'll be interested in seeing other folk's comments about this, as I'm hoping to be part of a camera club shoot at a large local shopping mall early next week. This should include shots of lit Xmas trees, possibly both indoors and outdoors. My guess is that we will not be able to use tripods, so long exposure HDRs will not be an option. My plan, at the moment, for at least some of the shots is to expose for the lights themselves plus two or three stops - and use flash to lift the tree foliage.

Andrew

You're right Andrew, I hadn't thought of the tree lights They have kept some tungsten tone rather than burning out to white, so that's a plus. I'd still like to see a single shot, especially if it had highlight and shadow correction applied, to see if that was capable of something similar to the HDR.

Your plan for the exposure of the Xmas trees sounds good - exposing for the lights plus 2 / 3 stops should give detail in the surrounds also - but don't you risk just blowing out the light highlights like that?

Diffused flash, maybe through a handheld lastolite kind of thing would be effective I'd think - direct flash may create uneven coverage of the tree and pale washed - out greens.

Spot metering on the brightest part of any scene and opening up 2 stops doesn't seem to blow anything out. You can sometimes get away with another third of a stop (to +2.33) before the histogram hits the buffers.

I have a stofen type flash diffuser that I'll probably use. It might need a little experimentation to get it right. I've a cheapo chinese clone bowl type diffuser on order but that'll probably not arrive in time.

Andrew

Sounds good Looking forward to seeing some shots nearer Christmas!

My guess is wouldn't even need to use HDR feature for a shot like this at ISO100. Just shoot not to blow the lights and bring up the shadows. Which technically is NDR too of course.

I think you could brighten up the whole pic somewhat though, even the lights as they look like they're running on 120V rather than 240V

Nothing wrong with 120V.