Agreed, but small clubs often do not have the funds to buy a good projector with a native resolution of 1400x1050 - most are well into 4 figures.

When I said "It worked fine", I meant Dicentra. The projector worked about as well as can be expected.

Andrew

We (Oldham CC) used DiCentra for the first time a couple of weeks back. All images were 1400x1050 - but the projector resolution is 1024x768. It worked fine.

Andrew

You can calibrate a projector using a colormunki too. We did at Oldham CC a month or so back - improved it no end.

Andrew

The "darkest" DNG did encompass pretty much the whole dynamic range of the scene. The sensor's dynamic range is (close to) adequate, providing you expose to just avoid blowing highlights. If a conventionally "correct" exposure had been used, the highlights would have been blown - as in the "darker" DNG.

The processing that was applied to the "darkest" DNG was largely to correct midtones. Lightroom did have to raise shadows substantially to restore detail but the increase in resulting noise isn't at all obvious visually.

Andrew

For both the images "darker" and "darkest" captured by Nigel, I think post processing technology is now such that a reasonable rendition of the scene can be produced without using HDR software. For other scenes, that may not be the case.

I think it is important to do whatever is possible to capture the best image(s) to minimise the extent of the post processing required. In general, I try to ETTR (Expose To The Right) but may also use ND grads or take bracketed shots if I think that might give me a better result.

As a rule, it would probably only occur to me to use HDR software if I thought it was imposssible to get a decent result without it - e.g. photo of something in a cave that also included part of the entrance or the example Smeggy gave of lit shop windows on a poorly lit street. In most/all of those cases, I'd want to use a tripod.

Andrew

I did - I used LR/Enfuse in Lightroom to merge your "darker" and "darkest" DNGs into a single JPEG. There is no practical difference between that and the JPEG just from "darkest".

Andrew

It is hard to tell for images at that size - it looks "OK". There is no EXIF data - so I don't know what apertures you used. The "darkest" DNG is a bit soft in the bottom LH corner, but that could be a focussing issue.

So what do you reckon? Would you recommend the lens?

Andrew

Fine. I hope you enjoy it. I don't really understand why you think there is extra effort in processing a single RAW -- just a matter of twiddling a few sliders in Lightroom, maybe a couple of minutes. It's a very intuitive tool and the process could hardly be easier.

On a side issue, I found it interesting that you used the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens. I've been wondering whether to get one of those for a while.

Andrew

Very clear cut. If you prefer your HDR images - then use HDR. I don't, so I won't - unless the scene demands it's use, but that is relatively very rare.

Simples ......

Andrew

Yep

Nope.

The highlight detail that was correctly exposed (in the "under exposed" image) would be used by the HDR software anyway. The area where the HDR software might be expected to gain (compared with using only your "darkest" image) is in the shadows, where a few percent of the darkest pixels have an RGB value of zero in your "darkest" DNG - but that isn't visually obvious.

Andrew