I don't often venture into the world of HDR, but when I am faced with a huge lighting challenge like the one in the scene above there really is no other way to get the full dynamic range on offer. If I exposed for the setting sun the boat in the foreground was diminished to murky blacks and greys, and if I exposed for the foreground the sunset became a wash of blown out highlights. Cue bracketing function on camera, roll on Photomatix (I never upgraded from version 3!) tweak in PSP X5, and voila! A simple exposure blend is enough for me, I try to keep these looking as natural as possible given the circumstances because overworked HDR is an abomination to behold... at least to me.
Quite a good result indeed.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right, no need for those fancy and truly horrendous Photoshop tricks in HDR - which should be what it should be after all, which is going from a gamut far to great to something with less contrast. In other words, a gamut that a monitor or a printer can manage!
You know what? I get better rendering with iPhone 5's HDR function than anything in Photoshop, and that is a real pity.
But I got you here - you should write "voilà" instead of "voila"… ha ha ha ha ha… :-)
Haha, "à" doesn't even exist on my keyboard! ;-)
DeleteiPhones and Samsung phones are actually much better than most "camera" companies would care to admit, and for most people are all they will ever need photographically speaking.
Have a great day Roger, always good to hear from you!