test shot

[suma126]

first light useing photomatrix pro 3. three differant exp fused together to get this result. shot at night useing nikon d90.

[Vanda]

To me a bit "cluttered." eg: Tap in front of church - post to right side of tree. The tree fights with the church for your attention. Not sure if you used photoshop? An impressive creation none the less where you would have learned to practise technique.

[Octane]

Ian, there's not much to it, to be honest. You take a bunch of bracketed exposures, throw them at the software, and watch it try to spit something out after you've fiddled a few knobs.

Shane, wait six months and then see how you feel about HDR. My honest opinion is that HDR blows chunks. I should know, I dabbled with it for a while. The real skill is in learning how to read light, and, exposing correctly, then learning to process in RAW software and Photoshop. Throwing images verbatim at a piece of software and hoping it returns something coherent is not the way to learn photography.

I know others will disagree with what I've just said.

H

[pin3appl3]

I totally agree Octane,

Shane the sooner you get past the "HDR Hole" the better! haha

[suma126]

i have always liked the hdr look for some photos like Church's graveyards and some building because of that ghostly look every ones got different tastes.

[suma126]

i don't have much skill yet so this will have to do. its pretty hard learn in a small town because theres know one to learn from.

[suma126]

i dint have photoshop but if i was going to buy one which one is the best version :shrug:

[Octane]

Shane,

That's cool. It's part of the modern photographer's journey, I guess.

I figured you had a nice D90 (my mate who sits behind me at work has one, and coupled to his 24-70mm f/2.8 does some pretty amazing things) and would be into using it to its fullest potential. Don't let software be the weak link in the chain.

As a suggestion, try taking those 3 exposures, and, manually blend them in Photoshop for shadows, highlights and midtones, using layer masks to set your thresholds. You will find you have so much more control and will be able to produce what you see as the ideal exposure in your head. You can then go ahead and fiddle with saturation, and contrast, colour balance, etc. Of course, if this is all for fun, then, ignore these remarks and HDR away!. ;)

My initial comment, and this one, weren't meant to be insulting, and I hope they didn't come across that way. It's just my opinion -- as mentioned, others (you, included) can and will disagree. :)

H

[Octane]

Duuuuude,

You don't need others to show you how it all works. Load up an image, any image (I used to practise on images of Milla Jovovich!) and mess around with every setting you can find until it starts to make sense. Of course, there's always the web with loads of tutorials.

If you don't have Photoshop, have a look at The GIMP. It's free, and, except for the fact that it doesn't work on 16-bit images, will get you heading in the right direction. It has a huge userbase, and, there's multitudes of tutorials and how-to's on getting things done. If you decide to purchase Photoshop (by the way, only CS5 is now available; think of it like progressions in operating systems; you can't buy Windows 2000, nowadays, for example), then the experience learnt from using The GIMP will go a long way in helping you get used to Photoshop.

Again, I didn't intend for this to go south -- if you're having fun with it, keep at it.

H

[suma126]

no insult taken I'm a big fan of your work.

[Vanda]

Shane,
I have not purchased PS myself - done a few courses on it though. I think its up to V5 or 6. I'm trying to decide whether to go Mac or Windows. Mac gives best colour - so I'm told - windows may require colour calibration. Best wishes

Ian

[lacad01]

PS is up to v5 (CS5). I 2nd H's recommendation to have a play with Gimp, it's a great graphics and photo processing package for nix.
By the way, not too bad as a test subject for first time HDR, agree with Ian on the composition side of things. If you have a look at some photo forums, HDR stirs up almost religious debate and conflicts, even amongst those who are so-called HDR afficiandos (I can think of another word but lets leave it at that)
Personnaly I don't mind dabling with Photomatix but only if I have heaps of time to fine tune the settings to get rid of halos, noise, etc and then have to post process in PS to get better results. Horses for courses :)