HDR Questions

[MiniChris]

I did a 3-shot bracket in RAW of this photo, then did some minor adjustments and saved as .dng files and did a HDR merge. After it all came out in the mixing, did some other editing to clarify more of the color, fix some nicks, etc.
Should I of saved them as .tiff's and then do the HDR or ???



I should note there was a light mist rising off the water.

[Shadowman]

I did a 3-shot bracket in RAW of this photo, then did some minor adjustments and saved as .dng files and did a HDR merge. After it all came out in the mixing, did some other editing to clarify more of the color, fix some nicks, etc.
Should I of saved them as .tiff's and then do the HDR or ???



I should note there was a light mist rising off the water.

I guess it would depend on what you felt you needed to edit in the post processing step. If it was sharpening, was it the result of the merge or in the originals. If you edit for contrast/brightness prior to tone mapping you could be eliminating pertinent tones that would possibly stand out in the HDR.

[MiniChris]

Then, I am assuming all the tweaking that can possibly be done, be done while they are still raw files? Also, when setting up each bracketed exposure, how large should the spread be - i.e., -1 +1 or higher. I am not interested in doing the edgy kind of HDR but someone posted some nice interior shots the other day that enhanced but didn't overpower. I am more exploring that aspect.

I wonder what the consensus is about HDR compared to good shooting and better PP?

[jiro]

This is just an idea, Chris. I think the way to set up an HDR type of image is to assess the situation first.

Are the highlights too bright for the scene? Are the shadow areas too dark to work on an 8-stop latitude between the highlights and the shadow areas? If it is then do the bracketing in a way as to expose the shadows right (Zone III) and then expose for the highlights on Zone VII. This can guide you more on how much exposure adjustment you have to do on your bracketing and not just on the +/- 1 setting on the camera. If you merged these 2 with the averaged metered image then you got a nice distribution of detail throughout. If properly done you wouldn't even notice that it was an HDR type of image since the details are in their respective places. It's nice to play around the 'HDR' look but for me it's more of a play and not for the expression of what you have visualized first in your mind. I would still probably go with 'what I think I saw' than with 'Oooh, this looks nice so I'll keep it like this'. Again, just as I have said... this is just my idea.

[Peter Ryan]

I'm with Jiro here and generally I do not think HDR works well for landscapes. Architecture possibly if the dynamic range is too great.

[MiniChris]

And what you are saying makes perfect sense. I really don't think I am going to explore this technique much further than what I did with the sunrise and that was an after thought in one of those, "I think I'll try this and see what happens." My query is more about the how to than the aesthetic qualities or lack of. A three exposure latitude isn't nearly enough range to get much in the way of fill light, shadow detail, etc. If I do this again, I will shoot at least 6 ranges (providing the light doesn't change too much.)

[MiniChris]

It doesn't turn out to be a particularly bad photograph for the effort other than there isn't enough strength in the middle values. I thnk the color is pretty decent.

[Peter Ryan]

Chris,

Why not try taking your best image and just processing that and see how it compares to the above HDR effort?

[jiro]

It doesn't turn out to be a particularly bad photograph for the effort other than there isn't enough strength in the middle values. I thnk the color is pretty decent.

If the outcome of your post-processing guided you to arrive at the image that you 'saw' in your mind then it is what it is. We can comment like it is good or not so good (no offense). But in the end, it will all boils down to your expression of yourself. It just so happens that when everything is placed nicely to where they should be in any image, all that we can say is... well done, my friend.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Chris,

There's never any benefit in doing 1 stop bracketing, especially over a 3 shot bracket; the camera is capturing 11 or 12 stops anyway, so the adjacent shots aren't going to extend the dynamic range by any significant amount, nor are they going to contain a dynamic range that's much different to what you already have.

In this case though, I'm wondering why you needed HDR anyway, the highlights appear to be controlled and exposed correctly, but because it's essentially a silhouette, there isn't any significant shadow details to try and protect, so I would have thought you'd have got much the same result from whichever capture has the best sky exposure.

In terms of saving as DNG, I'm not certain, but I suspect that you're on thin ice; a DNG is a RAW file format (albeit a open & publically documented one), and normal protocol dictates that RAW image data is never altered by RAW converters - only the metadata (so that the original image data always remains intact). So any changes you've made SHOULD only have been recorded as XMP metadata, and I somehow doubt that programs doing the HDR merge are going to honour any metadata changes (but I could be wrong).

If you feel you really need HDR, my suggestion would be to bracket at 2EV intervals - merge them as DNG - and then make any subsequent adjustments from there.

Hope this helps

[pwnage101]

Did you apply a tone map, or is the output linear?

Also, I don't think your "minor adjustments" before saving to DNG did anything. Camera Raw makes non-destructive edits to RAW images, and when you convert proprietary RAW files into DNG using Adobe software, it preserves the original data and copies over the slider values to recreate the output. Then when you merge to HDR it discards Camera Raw properties and merges the linear data.

[Radu Dinu Cordeanu]

Hi,
On "Luminous Landscape" you might read a Christopher Schneiter's opinion "Do You Need An HDR Intervention?"

[RockNGoalStar]

Chris, I think it's a lovely shot, and like others, I see no advantage of using HDR techniques in this image.

PS. In your sig you say that you "are a teechur" - purely for interest's sake, may I ask what you teach?