Paris HDR

[TigerOyster]

Hi all. The original photo was taken about 4 months back and after reading about HDR, i decided to try it out for the first time. I did the unorthodox way of creating the effect from a single RAW file and i hope to receive some feedback. thank you.

[emlee]

it looks very flat. usually HDR itself doesn't work. try touching up a bit more with other photo editing software, increase the contrast a bit.
the corners are especially soft.

[TigerOyster]

Thanks Emlee for pointing out the sharpness. i have sharpen the image a tad. I wasn't looking for surreal HDR images but was trying to bring out the backlit foreground from a pretty bad original

[lenzz]

is this a 3 exp. (-2 0 -2 or more..) HDR or a RAW single pic. hdr conversion.. ?

Nice work on the 2nd pic.. looks better than the previous one

[TigerOyster]

Originally Posted by lenzz is this a 3 exp. (-2 0 -2 or more..) HDR or a RAW single pic. hdr conversion.. ? Nice work on the 2nd pic.. looks better than the previous one

Thank you. It was a single RAW conversion

[night86mare]

your highlights are too blown to be recovered. this is why it doesn't work.

should have underexposed..

[TigerOyster]

Originally Posted by night86mare your highlights are too blown to be recovered. this is why it doesn't work. should have underexposed..

night86mare, the original was a bad shot to begin with. anything above the horizon was slightly overexposed and anything below that was well underexposed. After reading up on HDR it struck me that perhaps i can improve on the originals slightly and i was curious how it would turn out. In this case, would underexpose as you have suggested helped? (sorry if it sounded a dumb question as i am very new to all this). here is a link to the original
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/IMG_1962.jpg

OT abit, would a GND have helped?

thanks

[night86mare]

Originally Posted by TigerOyster night86mare, the original was a bad shot to begin with. anything above the horizon was slightly overexposed and anything below that was well underexposed. After reading up on HDR it struck me that perhaps i can improve on the originals slightly and i was curious how it would turn out. In this case, would underexpose as you have suggested helped? (sorry if it sounded a dumb question as i am very new to all this). here is a link to the original http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/IMG_1962.jpg OT abit, would a GND have helped? thanks

i am not sure, it depends on the dynamic range of your camera.

but underexposure is a better bet than overexposure, details are more easily recovered from shadows than highlights. which is why i mentioned what i mentioned.

a gnd would have helped here, so long as it is a correct gnd. if you use an overly harsh gnd (i.e. more stops than needed) then you will end up with glowing water with a darker sky than the water, which is not right.