Multi-exposure composite. Not sure I have the total exposure correct. As always, suggestions, greatly welcome.
Working my way to the the Ned, Marc, and Zac land of HDR comps.
Something went awry with the sky from what I'm seeing. HDR has potential but the tools are really difficult to use. You would get a much better shot from blending elements from your multiple shots into a single file in my opinion.
I'm surprised you used a 3-stop hard ND AND HDR ?
Posted by Marc Adamus on June 14, 2006 at 11:44 AM
What John said. I don't use HDR and I don't believe Zack does either. Just a little blending when needed.
This is an intersting experiment. I can see why you thought of HDR here; those tulip fields can have a pretty big range. I think the trick with HDR (and I'm certainly no expert) is to capture enough of a range to show the detail and color you want and then to collapse that all down into the space your final medium (a CRT, a printed, whatever) allows. You can either do that a global curves layer or some masked layer. You can also do it in the field with a GND. If you're doing it with a masked layer, you're really not that far away from blending.
It looks like you spent a lot of your lightness curve on the tulips in the FG and those came out pretty well. However, it didn't leave a lot of curve for your sky.
If it were my image, I'd cop out and say the sky isn't going to add much anyway (sour grapes and all that....). If the point here is to play around with HDR, then I'd start by deciding what it is you want the sky to look like and then do some thinking about how to budget your contrast and which tools to use to get you where you need to go.
Again, take all this with a grain of salt; I've never used HDR in a way I've been happy with. If you figure it out, feel free to share .
I wasn't kidding about the flowers in the FG. You're paying for it, but you've got a lot of good detail there.
Thanks so much Sean. Oddly enough I did not use any curves on either image. At this point, I think I'll go back the the two basic images, pull the top and bottom apart using the best of each image, apply the necessary curves for image improvement, then put them back together. With a solid horizonal line to work from, this should not be that had.
Discussion
4 repliesWorking my way to the the Ned, Marc, and Zac land of HDR comps.
Nikon D200
17-55 f2.8
3 stop hard ND
I'm surprised you used a 3-stop hard ND AND HDR ?
It looks like you spent a lot of your lightness curve on the tulips in the FG and those came out pretty well. However, it didn't leave a lot of curve for your sky.
If it were my image, I'd cop out and say the sky isn't going to add much anyway (sour grapes and all that....). If the point here is to play around with HDR, then I'd start by deciding what it is you want the sky to look like and then do some thinking about how to budget your contrast and which tools to use to get you where you need to go.
Again, take all this with a grain of salt; I've never used HDR in a way I've been happy with. If you figure it out, feel free to share
I wasn't kidding about the flowers in the FG. You're paying for it, but you've got a lot of good detail there.
Sean
Thanks again to all.