[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Starman73

I will get around to scaning the pics for you in the next couple of days.
Paul

Originally Posted by gary

Hi Andrew,

Once again, some beautiful shots of iconic Sydney locations.
Picture postcard perfect.

Best Regards

Gary

Thank you Gary, much appreciated.

Originally Posted by Robert_T

Wow Andrew, your HDR night city-scape stuff just blows me away. I'm wondering do you just pull in the exposures using Automatic merge HDR in CS3 or do you apply a more manual approach?

I had a go with some simple AEB triplets I took of Victoria's Parliament building early AM (see attached) when I was down there on business last week. In some ways the effect seems "flatter" than the individual frames and appeared noisier in the shadows. Any tips?

cheers,

Rob

Originally Posted by gary

Hi Rob,
The "flattening" is an artifact of the final tone mapping. You have all these bits
of high dynamic range which you then need to map to the (unfortunately) low
dynamic range of the output device, namely the monitor.

It's a bit like using high-end recording equipment to tape a concert in
full Dolby surround sound and then having to re-play it through a pocket AM
radio.
...
Gary

Rob that's a very nice shot, the colours are nicely matched.
As Gary said, when converting down from the 32 bit HDR image, we squeeze the range down to the available dynamic range of the lowest common denominator ie. the monitor.

But HDR is a very interesting beast in that the more data you have to play with, the better your final result will be, not unlike our astro processing.

I actually do all my exposures in Manual mode and dial up the exposures going through from very dark right through to overexposed, skipping every second stop or so.
In these I actually combined around 12 or 13 frames per photo and used PS3 merge to HDR function to get the 32 bit frame which I work from.

My tip would be to set a constant aperture and of course ISO, then dial in your various exposures in M mode, and don't be afraid to do at least 5 or more frames per HDR photo.
This is why HDR is not suited for all types of photography but it does yield some fantastic results when it's applied correctly.

Let me know if you need more info.