Do you experiment with HDR photography?

9 years 2 months ago #427595 by Harper Coswell
Who hasn't read all the colorful back and forth about HDR.  So doesn't anyone still experiment with it?  I found this software called Photomatix, how does this compare to the HDR software built into Phtooshop?  


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9 years 2 months ago #427641 by effron
I use HDR in Photoshop occasionally.. Photomatix is a good program but PS caught up fairly well. When I have an over contrasting scene I'll use HDR but mostly just blend a couple shots. If its obvious, I delete the attempt......;)

Why so serious?
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9 years 2 months ago #427648 by Joves
I pretty much experiment and play with everything. The other beauty of doing things digitally is you can revert until you save something as a hard data file. But then I only save them as copies, and retain the original. HDR is merely stacking images exposed differently, and then throwing out the bad parts. Some people consider bit mapping as HDR, and it is not. That is where you take a single image, and try to get an HDR image, it is not even close to the same thing. 


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9 years 2 months ago #427661 by Happy Snapper
A few years ago I did, but haven't in some time lately. 

Gripped Nikon D810 --- Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 --- Sigma 10-20mm f/4 --- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 --- SB600
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9 years 2 months ago #427692 by Jessa Layton
Yes, however my results aren't all that good most of the time.  I was told a good HDR shouldn't be noticeably fake.  Mine always seem to look a little 'off'.  So it's a work in progress.  


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9 years 2 months ago #427707 by Alan Nunez
I really enjoy Night and low light long exposure photography and I enjoy working with HDR. You are right it needs to be well done. I prefer Photoshop but only because I can not be bothered learning another tool.


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9 years 2 months ago #427734 by Adam Nagle
When I first got started a little, but it's so time consuming and most of mine looked fake as well.  The challenge with HDR is a done of post processing work.  Perhaps that is why I didn't stick with it.  I'd rather be out behind the camera. 


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9 years 2 months ago #427787 by Stealthy Ninja
Yeh, it's called shooting raw and playing with levels. :P
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9 years 2 months ago #427819 by Harper Coswell
What is?  I thought in order to make an HDR shot you need to bracket a number of photos together?


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9 years 2 months ago #427918 by Frost Photography
On and off, not to much these days.  No time.  

"The quickest way to make money at photography is to sell your camera."
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9 years 2 months ago #428085 by Stanly
No, I have to many other areas that I'm focusing on these days.  

Nikon Z6 | Nikon FM10 | Nikon D80 | Nikon 50mm f/1.8D | Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S VR | 35-105mm f/3.5 Macro | 80-200mm f/4.5 | SB600 | Pocket Wizard II
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9 years 2 months ago #428113 by riddell
I shoot and do HDR all the time, and have been for 10 years, way before HDR was a buzzword and everyone jumped on the bandwagon because they thought it was fun.

I use it commercially and will continue to do so.

Since your question was 'do you experiment?' The answer is every single time I've tried anything new in terms of any of the techniques I read about on the internet, or try using any of the applications, programs or plugins etc. all they do is result in a very amateur looking image. Awful.

Therefore I'll continue to use the only technique that works in my opinion to create commercial grade images which is to bracket and manually blend the images in PS, which is the sole technique I've been using for 10 years.


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9 years 2 months ago #428165 by dragosticu
Hello!

There are many nice HDR photos, but my opinion, is that this technique is very close to photo manipulation.
I prefer the classic way: no manipulation.

Of course, probably for commercial reasons is a good technique.

Dragos


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9 years 2 months ago #428243 by Greg Friedman
I love HDR, when I was messing around with creating them, mine just suck!  lol 


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9 years 2 months ago #428266 by Joves

Harper Coswell wrote: What is?  I thought in order to make an HDR shot you need to bracket a number of photos together?

If you are referencing what Ninja/Adrian wrote, then he was kidding. Hence this :P smilie.

dragosticu wrote: Hello!

There are many nice HDR photos, but my opinion, is that this technique is very close to photo manipulation.
I prefer the classic way: no manipulation.

Of course, probably for commercial reasons is a good technique.

Dragos


I know that you do this as a hobby so I have to tell you that it is not manipulation, but an old technique we even did with film. You use HDR to catch the Dynamic Range of a subject that has too great of a range for the camera to capture. As an example. If you expose correctly for the brightest part of the image, and then the dark areas are too dark to see, or recover, then  you use HDR techniques. This means you get as many properly exposed frames for the dark end, the middle range, and the bright areas, then you combine as many of those images as you want or need to get a well exposed image. You throw out the bad parts of the images obviously.


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