Landscape in HDR on digital compact

So I've gotten into photography as an actual hobby recently, and after finding this site, began furiously reading the tutorials. And after checking out these forums, what better place to learn more.

I've been recognizing the lack of dynamic range on my new camera, a Canon SX200. Love it, but I know it's limited. So I've been experimenting with HDR, and decided to try and use it as a solution to overblown highlights and underexposed shadows thusly:

http://backup.cambridgeincolour.com/...com/zx0ba0.png
Took this at 28mm equivalent, f/8, and ISO 100. Time of day was 7:24, about an hour before sunset. Shooting in manual and focused at infinity, I took 4 photos. The first was meant to expose all the highlights and details in the dark shadows of the picture. The last showed a nice range of blue throughout the sky with cloud detail. The whole range was from 1/6 to 1/100 seconds. Also applied an unsharp mask.

One of the problems I know I came out with was haloing around the horizon in yellow. I wasn't quite sure if there was a certain way to apply settings when tonemapping, but I relied on a mixture of what looked best and realistic.

I would love any comments and guiding, since they'll only help me improve. I think it turned out quite well for a landscape in my town. I'd also like to throw a very similar image that I don't think looks as appealing, but might be useful for feedback for technique or whatnot.
http://backup.cambridgeincolour.com/...com/zxprt2.png

Wesley

Welcome on board the C in C bus! Hope you've already found out that we're a fairly harmless lot, with a bundle of knowledge and experience that people are enthusiastic about sharing. This is not a place for prima donna's who guard their knowledge and skills for fear of ... something!

There a lot of people here who create these sorts of images, so I'll let them come in with specific comments and advice. But it looks like you've already made quite a fast ascent of the learning curve. Good to have you on here.

Hi Wesley,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me, great to have another new member, especially as you have jumped right in with an example and a problem.

I'm not into HDR, so I'll leave that aspect to those that do. It will help them to know what software you are using for HDR though, and what you use for normal PP. Are these shot RAW (if possible on your camera) or jpg?

Regarding the second image, I suspect that's a crop from the top left corner of a bigger picture, the distortion of the buildings is the give away, or at least it is the left half of a landscape oriented shot, this might be improved upon in PP, depends what software you have, but it looks quite a bad case, so I doubt it could be entirely 'straightened'.

The second also appears to lack a full tonal range, in my view, it is always a good idea to check the histogram in PP software and (for most images (there are artistic exceptions)), ensure there is a 'black' and a 'white' in the final cropped shot; i.e. some pixels going down (left) to 0 and some stretching right to 255.

I do like the compositions, a good effort and I'm sure we can help you further (collectively).

One other question; where is this?

Hope that helps (for now),

Hello,

These were shot in jpg. The sx200 can't save in raw, though I've been playing around with CHDK to try it. Unfortunately, the raw file types from CHDK don't seem to be able to be read by most programs. So until I can figure that out, its jpg. And I have been using photoshop cs5 for my work.

The second photo (and first) are actually uncropped. It probably looks that way because of the odd and precarious way I was using my tripod on a bridge ledge to quickly get some shots. And I agree with lack of tonal range, the top half of the picture looks like a 2D pastel. These two photos will help describe what the scene really looked like:
http://i25.tinypic.com/1zbh2yx.jpg
http://i32.tinypic.com/2n71654.jpg
I think I'll try working on that second image again.

And these pictures were taken in Bethlehem, PA. I was on a bridge in the north side. For the first photo, I was looking towards the south side that is separated by an unseen river, and for the second was looking the other way, north.

You use software that optimizes the HDR image for a natural look.
Your images merged in the SNS-HDR Pro
http://www.mmj.pl/~snibisz/tmp/2n71654-HDR.jpg