Or just use a tripod.

 

Definitely try to use a tripod. I have found however that even with a tripod sometimes even the slight pressure to operate buttons and dials can end up shifting the image enough to add a noteable effect.

 

Just tried it out, took 6 pictures in total and combined them in photomatix. I'm going to have to play around with it some more, didn't come out as vibrant as I wanted.

 

Beautiful shot. lookin sweet.

 

Nice pics man. That 5-axis kit looks sweeeettt on the IIP.

 

Amidoinitright?

 

That is pretty decent. The coloring is great. The picture looks natural and that is the point. Most people think HDR is about making it look amazing. But you made it look natural, like what the eye should see. So yes, you achieved it.

 

My over exposed pic was slightly off, thats why theres some weird crap going on in the D/S headlight and the silver trim on the grille is off.

 

very nice...

 

Can you post the normally exposed (or best looking) single exposure?

From what I can tell you "did it right" in terms of processing, but the choice of frame was not what I would consider a good one for HDR...

Generally for HDR you want to choose a frame with high dynamic range. I see you had your lights on which would qualify as a bright or blown out area but one thing keeps me from really feeling this as a good example of a time to use HDR:

Bright light sources are often considered acceptable to be blown out because, well, your eye couldn't make it out either. For instance if the sun is blwon out in an HDR, that's fine, there really isn't a decent way to capture and reproduce that. So the headlights, while technically out of range of a normal shot, are somewhat questionable in making this an HDR candidate in the first place.

Technically I think you did it right and technically your source does appear to have a high dynamic range, but really in this situation I would probably have chosen to just single shot it as nothing but the headlights seems to push either end of the range spectrum.

I would concentrate on looking for the right opportunity to get an HDR shot... a good one would be a car with a sun setting behind it. Again the sun will probably still be blown out, but getting the car to look naturally light as well as whatever background you have while simultaneously getting the clouds to show with good contrast would likely be an excellent test of HDR.

As for your toy car pic above, I have to say again I think there just wasn't enough range to begin with to make an HDR a really feasible method.

Indoor lighting where the light source is not directly visible is very seldom a good choice for HDR. Likewise overcast or early day/late noon shots tend to display limited range and not be the best for HDR .

In my experience the best times for HDR are:

Shooting something that is heavily shaded along with items that are in bright direct sunlight in the same shot.

Sunsets or sun rises facing the sun.

Night or dusk shots with light sources in them (bulbs or headlights etc).

Good work though, seems you got the process pretty much down!

 

^ Thanks, just to let you know, I've never taken HDR photos before...in fact, I've only been shooting with my D40 for about 1 month now.

Here's the normal exposure shot (only used 3 shots, +2.7, 0.0, -2.7 EV)



I left the HIDs on to see how they would come out.

 

Looking at your nomral exposure compared to your HDR one I don't see much difference, which again ties into how suitable a shot is for HDR.

If you look under the wheel wells in the car on the left, your cars shadow and grill and the HIDs you will see that the final product doesn't really show much that the normal shot does. Those would be the place I would think would show the results of more dynamic range first.

But even more important, the normal expsure looks pretty good already to me. ie there really isn't much for the HDR to "Fix" (nothing left out due to lack of dynamic range).

Looks like the process and idea are solid, just need to practice finding the right frame to shoot!

And thanks for bashing on BRM! If I don't like it when I see it now I am blaming you!

 

Thanks for the tips, I was mostly doing the HDR thing to enhance the colors

And I used to have IIP, that's why IIP > NBM/BRM . But it doesn't matter, because SW > all other colors.

 

If you really just want popping colors, you can probably get away with a single shot and use the pseudo hdr effects in photomatix.

 

^ I didn't even think of doing that . Atleast I'm getting some practice taking multiple shots without moving the camera. Now that I have a tripod, it should be much easier.

 

 

with cs3, i cant save my HDRs as .jpg, what format do you save it in so you can upload to sites such as photobucket? please help

 

^ With photomatix, it saves them as .tif or .jpg, so I just use .jpg so I can upload it to tinypic.com

 

ahh nice, photomatix is alot easier to use then cs3

 

^ Yes. Yes it is.

I gotta find a key to register it, these watermarks are annoying lol.