HDR Choices.

The HDR realm is much like a hole, a place you can get stuck for a very long time. I have been experimenting with HDR for quiet a long time using mostly photoshops HDR Pro. It has developed over the years but still remains in my opinion one of the worst ways to create a HDR. Perhaps i should rephrase. HDR Pro in photoshop has never had a very powerful deghost tool. If any clouds move, which they often do, you can be left with horrible artifacts you have to clone out later. I do not know if these problems were fixed in cs6 but my cs5 definitely displays them. I also experience severe darkening of my exposures. I was not impressed with its engine.

For this assignment i was hoping to get my hands on a new wide angled lens for my new camera body and photomatix. I had used the trial version of photomatix and found it to be superlative. As for the new lens, HDR's can look very striking when a lot of sky and a prominent foreground dominate the image. As i sold my old crop sensore wide angle lens and crop sensor body i was left with little choice to shoot this assignment. Unfortunately my lens didn't arrive on time and photomatix proved hard to get (for a student). So i used the technique we were shown in class using layers in conjunction with HDR Pro. Below are a few of my results.

Shot at about 200mm this is 7 exposures. The composition isn't great on this one but the colours are nice while not feeling overcooked. This was done completely manually in photoshop using layers. A very long process.

Looks like a pano but its just a HDR with the bottom and top cropped for more interesting compositions. It's subtle and works as per the brief, just have to get another persons opinion.

Another 7 exposure image. This one i used HDR pro for the sky and manually masked in the foreground. I like this image, it is a far off subject so the long tele focal length works and it was a great moment with the weather. David Flannigan suggested i amp up the colours a bit more but was still impressed with the overall subtleness of the hdr effect.

Using layer in photoshop this image took a very long time to create. Many ghosting issues and shooting into the sun made things very difficult. However i wanted the tree and the web in the image so was left with no choice. 

Yet another tele image (already explained) this image was don mainly using HDR Pro with a few tweaks in photoshop to get the whites looking nice. More about line and shape I do like the simplicity of this image.

I am happy with how this image turned out. Colours are vibrant without being in your face. Detail is good and a fairly nice composition. A combination of HDR Pro and layers was used to achieve total tonal range.

I hope to gain a little more technique with newer software as well as some advice on which image is the strongest to submit. Had fun doing this assignment!