Colosseum in HDR: C&C Appreciated

[TheBigE]

All,

Going through more photos from Rome. This was one of my first attempts at HDR. I think I like the results, as you can see it was a cloudy overcast day.

Of the two images, I think I like the first better.

I welcome any inputs

[Manfred M]

HDR on a cloudy overcast day? Why?

I don't see anything in this shot that would suggest HDR treatment would be needed to bring out the details in this shot. How many shots did you take and what range did you bracket your exposure across?

[TheBigE]

HDR on a cloudy overcast day? Why?

I guess because I did not know any different. I took 5 exposures -2 EV, -1EV, 0EV, +1EV, +2EV

Just a quick develop of my 0EV photo is below.



I guess looking at the last photo, it resembles the Colosseum more.

[Manfred M]

I guess looking at the last photo, it resembles the Colosseum more.

I would tend to agree. You should be able to recover some of the sky in post (especially with a RAW file), but frankly cloudy, featureless skies don't look that great. I find that a B&W conversion sometimes fixes these types of sky.

As a general rule of thumb, bracketing your shots by 2 stops, rather than one might give you a better base to do HDR with.

[Geoff F]

The stonework has come out well but I find the sky rather distracting, particularly in the second image; although it does look better at full screen size.

[TheBigE]

Geooff - Thanks. I do like how the stonework come out in the HDR image, my stand 0EV is much like all the others that are shot of the Colosseum. I am not sure if there is much I can do with the sky. I may try some PP and see if I can bring down the sky a bit. Not sure yet.

[Manfred M]

Erik - I think there is more detail in the image than your capture shows; even working with a screen capture of your shot I can draw more detail out of the clouds and shadow areas. You should be able to get even better results from the original image without having to resort of HDR.