naff! hdr pentax k7

i wish i hadn't purchased this camera . even on the strong setting the hadr effect is barely noticeable

my Sony hx 300 gives fabulous hdr images

any suggestions

bye the way i only paid £35 for my k7 so i shouldnt complain

get some decent software

One's usual reaction to barely-noticeable HDR is "thank heavens for that..."

By barely noticeable do you mean you're still struggling for dynamic range (i.e. it's not working) or that you don't get the artifacts when HDR is done for effect (I'm with womble and wouldn't want them anyway).

My K-5 does wonderful HDR, apart from occasional softness from movement, (can't be helped) it produces very natural looking images with much more dynamic range.

No HDR:


With HDR and -1.6 EV in post:

i dont want natural, thats boring. my l hx300 does really tarty hdr and thats what i want.

Pentax doesn't do tarty. Stick with your Sony.

so why buy the K-7?

A K7 for £35 sounds like quite a bargain. It's a great camera, a sort of half way step between the K20D and the K5, having the same body design as the K5.

All great cameras. I quite miss my K20D.

AN HDR image is only good if it's not visibly an HDR image.

You can always get the results you want by taking the shots manually and then combining them in software afterwards.

with photomatix you can make the image very natural looking or completely eye bleeding.

The Sony is 4 years younger than the Pentax K-7 so may have improved (subjective) in this area over Pentax's first attempt at this.

Fundamentally though, HDR is intended to provide a single combined image, that retains details in the darker regions at the same time as retaining the details in the brighter highlight regions. One of these would be lost if you took just a single photo, which would have to expose for just one region or the other.

As always, because it takes multiple photos and merges them together, HDR is not ideal for any scenes with movement in it and ideally should be tripod based. It's also only intended for scenes where there is a distinct difference in brightness between part of the scene, such as shooting inside a house, but with a bright window in the background for example.

Pentax takes a somewhat purest approach to this, and doesn't try to make the image seem crazy computer art type exposures, at least on the auto and level 1 settings. More info on this here: https://www.adorama.com/alc/0011608/blogarticle/The-Pentax-K-7-The-era-of-in-cam...

If you are not happy with the results, there are better options than trying to do this in camera. As others have suggested, I'd recommend learning to shoot bracketed exposure photos and then importing them into specialised HDR software such as photomatix This will then provide you with all the tools required to make HDR shots as crazy as you want them, and offers much more flexibility than the 3 or 4 in camera settings alone. By post processing your images, you can shape them to be exactly what you want them to be, whilst still benefiting from the image quality of the Pentax DSLR.

Just to add to the comments above... Photomatix has the option to match images before blending meaning that you can get very good results from hand-held photos. If I think I might need HDR, I set my K-3 to take 5 bracketed images with one shutter-press. 95% of the time I find I don't need them and editing one of the raw files suffices, but it is nice to have the option. The main issue is being aware of the shutter speed of the longest exposure. Photomatix also has the option to delineate an area of movement, and it will then try to make sure you don't get ghosts. For example, cars on a road can be outlined. My picture in Edinburgh that was "pic of the week" last year had exactly that (cars on a far bridge) and it worked perfectly.

Best wishes, Kris.

I get the impression the OP was not interested in an actual discussion.

I use my Sony RX100 for HDR images and with satisfactory results. Two examples below. It didn't work very well on my K-70.