How do you do HDR?

What techniques do you employ when taking HDR shots?

Do you have preferred subjects?
Do you have a specific amount of exposures you use?
Do you always use RAW or JPEG?
Do you have preferred software?

I’m looking to improve my skills and develop my ability in this area.
Feel free to check out my current work at http://www.macleod.arknet.co.uk/photoblog and provide some feedback

Regards

Alasdair MacLeod
http://www.macleod.arknet.co.uk

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Originally Posted by Alasdair

What techniques do you employ when taking HDR shots?

Do you have preferred subjects?
Do you have a specific amount of exposures you use?
Do you always use RAW or JPEG?
Do you have preferred software?

I’m looking to improve my skills and develop my ability in this area.
Feel free to check out my current work at http://www.macleod.arknet.co.uk/photoblog and provide some feedback

Regards

Alasdair MacLeod
http://www.macleod.arknet.co.uk

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Hello;
No I don't have a preferred subject,
No I don't have a specific amount of exposures to use,
I always use RAW,
I use the cheapest software which is picturenaut.

To the more serious stuff, when I started photography as long now as 9 months ago I thiought I had problems with high ev span hard light ect, but I didn't want to take pics in the early light or evening. Might be because I'm lazy but more like not many capture the midday sun.

So I looked at HDR, now though I hardly ever need it because ACR can get the sort of detail I want from a single image. But not always. :)

Do you have preferred subjects? > especially interior photography
Do you have a specific amount of exposures you use? > this depends on the dynamic range of the scene
Do you always use RAW or JPEG? > RAW, of course
Do you have preferred software? > my favorites are in order of quality: Zeronoise, tufuse, Photomatix (sometimes, especially the way EXPOSURE FUSION)

Awesome,

Zeronoise and Tufuse.

Are these both better quality than Photomatix? Are these MAC only or are they PC and MAC?

Regards
Alasdair MacLeod
http://macleod.arknet.co.uk/photoblog

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Originally Posted by Alasdair

What techniques do you employ when taking HDR shots?

Do you have preferred subjects?

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Any scene will do, but only some work best-sunrise/sunsets, well lit interiors, night cityscapes.

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Do you have a specific amount of exposures you use?

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When shooting in jpeg +/-2.0 the limits of my P90.

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Do you always use RAW or JPEG?

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I use RAW when I have my D60, my P90 does not shoot in RAW.

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Do you have preferred software?

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I have FDR Tools and Capture NX and use Photoshop Elements for post processing.

I am new to HDR so beware of tarnished images.

Hi Alisdair - I go along with most of the comments already made in the replies. RAW or TIFF formats work. Picturenaut is a good free piece of software, but make sure you check out the web site http://www.hdrlabs.com/ thoroughly, and, see if you can get hold of a copy of the book "The HDRI Handbook" by Christian Bloch ISBN: 978-1-933952-05-5. It is superb for serious HDR work. I would also point you to HDRPhotostudio (Google and ye shall find) for more serious software.

Hope these points help.

Cheers

David

Zeronoise is essential in interior photography. Tufuse performs best in landscapes. Photomatix is a program whose results are unexpected, sometimes going very well, sometimes gets very unrealistic results, is unpredictable.
Zeronoise only available on Windows and Linux.
Tufuse think that is not available for Mac, although you can run a Windows virtual machine on MAC (PARARELLS)

"Do you have preferred subjects?" - not really, no; it's more that I dislike "blown" highlights and muddy, noisy shadows. I try to achieve an image approaching what we see - well-separared clouds in the sky, and shaded doorways should have colour, and not just noise!

Do you have a specific amount of exposures you use? - At least -1, 0, +1 but that's largely because that's the limit of the auto-bracket of my camera. I've now dusted off my (very) old tripod, which is sturdy enough that I can reset the shutter-speed in between exposures. so it'll be -2, 0, +2 from now on.

Do you always use RAW or JPEG? RAW!

Do you have preferred software? Picturenaut, by a long way. It will do the RAW conversions and the HDR merge very quickly but I am now experimenting with using RAW Therapee, and then feeding Jpegs into Picturenaut. There's slightly less pixelation at 100% magnification. Both free!

HTH

Peter