Culver

[Deano]

Here's another HDR pic I got today. Just one of many. See the bigger size at my webpage. Enjoy.

 

[danc]

I really like the effect that you're getting in your HDR work Deano. Care to share some settings??

[bigfish1965]

Yes please do. I am going to try and play with the images prior to mixing and see what happens. Photoshop has an HDR tool, but it isn't as good as the photomatrix bundle.

I'l like to try and get a slightly more surreal look like you get deano.

[Deano]

Well, I've found that not all pics will always get you what you want, but with more exposures, the better. One trick I do with my camera at first, to take the pics is set it to aperture priority. And using the bracketing feature I set the exposure to +-1EV (either or), take the three pics, then set it to the other-+1EV and get three more. Now I have 6 pics, (+2,+1,0,0,-1,-2) discard one of the 0EV's and use the five. Depending on the lighting, sometimes I get a +-3, then I'll use 6. Using many photos helps reduce noise.

In Photomatix, there is a save and load button, I have about 5 different settings saved, I use these for a basis point. Sometimes I'll try each one to see what's closest to what I'm looking for, and then use that one. Then comes moving the sliders to achieve that extra little something to get a satisfied result.

Here's one of my Detailed Enhanced settings.

Strength = 70

Color Saturation = 64

Light smoothing = one over right from center

Luminosity = 5

Tone White Point = 4.308 Black Point 1.130 Gamma = 1.00

Micro Smoothing = 2

All the rest are zero

 

I find that for a blue sky, Temperature -2 seems to work best.

 

It can be tricky figuring out the fine tuning, but if you go to the extremes of each slider, one at a time, you'll see what it effects better to know what your adjusting.

Give it a shot and remember to save the setting before you fine tune, then the next time you can just load that setting and start from there.

Hope that helps.

 

Here's another photo I did yesterday

 

Edited November 22, 2007 by Deano

[danc]

Thanks Deano. I haven't been out with my camera for about a month now at least. And with my schedule, it may be a month or more before I do so. Thanks so much for the tips.