My first HDR attempt

[Andre Shawnson]

Hey guys I'm new here and semi new to photography so go easy on me. It's just a hobby for now. This is my first attempt at HDR right here by the house. Thanks for any cc you can give me.

[Stargazer77517]

Interesting subject, but the processing is needing help. Seems a bit soft for 1 and needs some contrast to awaken the depth and colors. HDR is not an easy process to master. Keep at it, it will take some trial and error but it will work. There is a tutorial on the before coffee web site that has a lot of good info on HDRs. Check it out and keep shooting.
Looking forward to seeing more as you progress thru the learning curve.
Also might want to watch the curvature of the horizon, UWA are some of the worst. I know I have trouble with that one myself.

[Andre Shawnson]

Just the man I was hoping would reply. Fred I have been inspired by your work for a good while. Always looked at your posts on 2coolfishing and was amazed with some of the stuff you do then I stumbled on this place and saw ya here as well. Pretty much embarassed to say that I have been a lurker for a while.
First off thanks for the insight. The curvature of the horizon is due to me shooting with a 10.5mm fish eye. I am pretty sure I can fix that easily though. I didnt even notice it much till you said something.
The thing that I am not sure I can fix though is the sharpness. I seem to be losing sharpness with every picture I post on here for some reason. Any ideas? maybe when they are compressed? what am I doing wrong there?
As far as contrast goes I was afraid to overdo it and have them look like cartoon photos like most of the overdone HDR stuff does. I will mess with it tonight when I get home from the real job and see what improvements if any I can make.
Thanks again for the cc. It means a lot coming from someone with so much talent!!!

[Stargazer77517]

Originally Posted by Andre Shawnson

Just the man I was hoping would reply. Fred I have been inspired by your work for a good while. Always looked at your posts on 2coolfishing and was amazed with some of the stuff you do then I stumbled on this place and saw ya here as well. Pretty much embarassed to say that I have been a lurker for a while.
First off thanks for the insight. The curvature of the horizon is due to me shooting with a 10.5mm fish eye. I am pretty sure I can fix that easily though. I didnt even notice it much till you said something.
The thing that I am not sure I can fix though is the sharpness. I seem to be losing sharpness with every picture I post on here for some reason. Any ideas? maybe when they are compressed? what am I doing wrong there?
As far as contrast goes I was afraid to overdo it and have them look like cartoon photos like most of the overdone HDR stuff does. I will mess with it tonight when I get home from the real job and see what improvements if any I can make.
Thanks again for the cc. It means a lot coming from someone with so much talent!!!

Thank Shawn for the kind words.
I figured it was a fisheye of sorts, I use a 10-22mm canon most of the time and at the 10mm end I start to get the same distortion with mine. most of the time im at 12-20mm and that helps with keeping the curviture of the horizon down.
Im not sure what you are using for creating these, I use Photomatrix 4.0, the tutorial here Photomatix Tutorial Before The Coffee has a bunch of info on creating HDRs. Its written for Photomatrix 4.0 so Its easy to follow.
As for the sharpness, when you resize for posting on the web, along with here, try and keep the image at 800-1000 px on the longest side and no more than 290k in size and they should come out great. Here is some info I learned just recently from the folks here.

http://www.texasphotoforum.com/forum...2a-update.html

Hope this helps, and keep at it. It will come to ya.
Glad you quit lurking, there is a wealth of info and great photographers here to help. Post if you have any questions.

[Andre Shawnson]

Fred thank you so much for the info!!! I have some work to do tonight when I get home from the office!! Unlike most people I think I actually enjoy learning and executing a good PP process as much as I enjoy shooting. Almost wish I could make money doing editing instead of the real job I have. I did get Photomatix 4.0 recently so your tutorial will work perfectly as well as the resizing info. Anyway thank you very much for the info!! I will post a couple revisions tonight for sure.

[Andre Shawnson]

2nd go round...hopefully this is an improvement....#2 still doesnt look as sharp as i'd like and i think it could use some cropping...all the info definitely helped Fred thanks again!!!!!

[ggeorge11]

I like the 1st and the 3rd one best, very nice work, I really like using the HDR to bring out the clouds, and textures.

[Andre Shawnson]

thank you ....i guess i still havent quite figured out the sizing yet but i was trying to keep these under 300k so the sharpness wouldnt suffer...i think i can go larger though now that i figured out what i was doing wrong in photomatix

[Andre Shawnson]

one more try with one of them then time for bed

[ggeorge11]

I use Shutterfly, I like their site, and then you just embed the link. That way you do not lose anything when it is posted. I love doing HDR. I just posted an extreme example, but I like playing with the pictures, and seeing what happens, keep doing it, and enjoy it!!!

[Stargazer77517]

Much, much better, I personally like to make it look as real as I can, so just a suggestion, the strenght slider could be moved to the left a bit more, and maybe the saturation also, but its your call. If you happy, thats all that counts.
The first one of post 6 is a good one, a bit of desaturation and contrast bump and you will be pretty much there.
Now you know what the controls do, so keep playing with them and try different settings.
Take a look at this thread, and esp the ones by Real 7 (Scott). He has been my mentor, when mine look as good as his, Ill be a happy camper . JDizzle and Argyle are also ones to watch, all 3 of these guys rock. This will give you an idea were to head to. As a point of info, these guys, along with myself, use Grad ND filters to help with color saturation. Mostly 2 and 3 stop reverse grads. Singhray filters are the best ones to invest in when you get ready ( The 4x4 and 4x6). They are pricey but dont have the color shift like the cheaper ones do.

AWESOME HDR LANDSCAPES! - Canon Digital Photography Forums

[Andre Shawnson]

Fred thanks again. You have opened up a whole new world for me. I guess I will have to start calling you my mentor ;) The only problem is I stayed up waaaaayyyyyy too late trying different things on these and some other shots I had. The real job is really holding back my creativity! I wanted to try a few different ways of processing these and I definitely like the more natural looking version as well. One more question do you actually convert your files to TIFF before merging them in photomatix like the tutorial says? I just left these in raw then merged them for the purpose of saving time.

[Stargazer77517]

Originally Posted by Andre Shawnson

Fred thanks again. You have opened up a whole new world for me. I guess I will have to start calling you my mentor ;) The only problem is I stayed up waaaaayyyyyy too late trying different things on these and some other shots I had. The real job is really holding back my creativity! I wanted to try a few different ways of processing these and I definitely like the more natural looking version as well. One more question do you actually convert your files to TIFF before merging them in photomatix like the tutorial says? I just left these in raw then merged them for the purpose of saving time.

It really depends, I try both and see which one looks the best.

[groovyone]

Very cool shots. I like the landscape oriented ones better for this shot. Very cool to see the improvements and you found the right guy to talk to!

[Andre Shawnson]

alright last one....did a 5 image merge this time with tiff files instead of raw......took some saturation and strength out in photomatix and adjusted levels slightly in cs5 to make things look more natural and not so neon....i think i finally got one close to what the actual scene looked like that morning without overdoing the HDR effect....