I only got as far as St. Augustine so no Disney, unless you count the
Disney store at the outlet mall!
After about 6 months of serious HDR practice I find that as time goes on I tend to go for a more subtle approach for most subjects. Some images still respond better to a more wild treatment but these are rare. Here are a few recent ones:
Pearson's Falls - waterfalls are notorious for a wide dynamic range, the white water is often blown out and shadows are full of noise. HDR is a great solution and it is easy to add 4 or even 8 stops without making it look like any digital processing was used.
Raffle Car - I didn't carry a tripod but a nearby grand piano worked just fine! The three exposure AEB was enough for this indoor scene, where a single exposure would never capture all the detail of a black car with chrome trim.
Pool - this was a tough one. I was in the pool drinking a beer after a long hot day when the lighting was at it's best and just didn't want to get out!
The sky was completely dark by the time this was taken, a little dusk light might have taken much of the red out. Oh well, just another excuse to try again!
Concours - This one got a heavy treatment to help make the cars look like models and to stand out from the background. This was taken handheld but at a fairly fast shutter speed so Photomatix had little trouble aligning the three images.
Lighthouse - a classic example of where we would ordinarily have to make a choice between a blank sky or a seriously underexposed subject. With HDR we can have it all, sort of. There is still a fair amount of manual correction and masking done to clean up HDR haloes and other artifacts.
Capturing the images:
On an entry-level or mid-range Canon it is easy to get a 3 step HDR using the AEB mode, that will get us up to 4 extra stops of range. For more range I use AEB *and* Av to first take exposures of 0, -2, +2 at -2 Av, then three more at +2 Av. This gives exposures at -2, -4, 0, and +2, 0, and +4. Only one of the two identical exposures can be used or the Photomatix software will choke. I have found some very rare scenes where even more range than the 8 extra stops would help, mostly night scenes with bright light sources (like the pool with the tiki torches).
High-end Canons allow more steps and wider exposure ranges, making it easier to capture HDRs. Hopefully this will trickle down to the more affordable Canons soon.
Right now I'm torn between which of the programs I would like to buy (and can't afford both right this second.) Anyway, again great shots!!
