My Fist HDR Photo

[Crimthann]

I wanted to share my first time playing around with HDR photography. This picture was created from 20 different photos at varying shutter speeds. Lemme know what you guys think!

 

[Rosseau]

Good colours on parts of the clam and I like that we can see its gills inside.

The sand appears to be pretty washed out and I would hope that with HDR this could disappear.

I guess the tricky part here is that the mantle may move around a bit while you're taking the pics - I think you can see a little bit of this on the edges.

 

[Crimthann]

You're right about the edges. It happened again with the picture I'm posting below. It was a choice between the sand and the mantle, but I think i could fix this by using a winder range of shutter speed. I would also like to do my next round keeping a fixed shutter speed and only adjusting the aperture. At least I'm getting faster at it . The one below was off of 25 different shutter speeds. Although it looks a little more grayed out on the web version than my much higher quality one.

<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q61/Crimthann/Fish/ShroomsHDR2.jpg">

 

[Crimthann]

The next one was created using Photomatrix with some slight adjustments in Photoshop.

<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q61/Crimthann/Fish/CLAMHDRP.jpg">

Next was using the same photos again in Photoshop.

<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q61/Crimthann/Fish/ClamHDRPS.jpg">

As you can tell Photomatrix is much much easier to use. Although this program specializes at HDR photos. Seriously considering buying it if I cant get Photoshop to match it. What do you guys think?

 

[Crimthann]

Here's the fist photo converted to HDR through Photomatrix and then slightly adjusted in Photoshop. You can see the scratches on my acrylic tank where it turns black on the right and the left but easily rubber stamped out. Not really what I'm working on getting good at so I left it alone.

<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q61/Crimthann/Fish/Clam1P.jpg">

 

[Blazer88]

I'm a little confused as to what you are trying to accomplish with HDR. I personally think you can do everything you need to with a single (assuming proper) exposure. I've only really found HDR useful when shooting directly into the sun to not blow out the sky and still get foreground detail, our tanks have MUCH less dynamic range. Even when shooting landscape, I've never found a need for more than 3 bracketed exposures let alone 25. The top picture looks the best to me but I think that could easily be done with a single exposure. I think you can save yourself quite a bit of time, lol.

 

[Crimthann]

The purpose behind me trying to get good at HDR is that sand and some rocks tend to bleach out when we're trying to get the more natural colors inside what we're taking a photograph of. I'm trying to see if I can achieve a happy medium between still showing these background items while maintaining a natural coloration in the subject of the photo.

While i think the Clam in this one seems more natural :

<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q61/Crimthann/Fish/Clamsmall.jpg">

I think the sand in this one seems more natural :

<img src="http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q61/Crimthann/Fish/Clam1P.jpg">


I'd like to get somewhere in between with both where the whole photo shows more what we see through our eyes.

Either way the top one is a HDR photograph using Photoshop's conversion process, so it shows more of the sand than what you would have seen with a normal one shutter speed photograph.

 

[Crimthann]

You have some really good photos on your website btw Blazer88.

 

[zonco]

This is a good link for hdr photo's I think it depends on the scene but
sometimes the photo comes out better when you combine less
photo's . I think it helps if you take the pictures in tv mode to so your f stop stays the same while your shudder goes up or down.