DSLRUsers.com

Hi all,
During our holiday in Warrnambool we were taking some photos of the kids in the park and found this great tree to take photos against, however for this particular shot, the sky and background were ALOT brighter than the foreground (being under the shade of the tree), so I thought I'd actually try putting together a HDR version, as below (click to see larger image):



This image was made up from 3 exposures (I think it was 1.7 stops between shots)...as below:



The first was exposed for the sky. the second was exposed for the background and the third for the foreground.
Looking back, I think I could have exposed a little better for the sky, but otherwise I thought this came out reasonably well - taken hand held and bracketed with the D70 (in quick succession).

The HDR was put together using Photomatix, then saved as a TIFF, opened in NX2 and I used a couple of control points to brighten a couple of areas locally.

Any thoughts/comments on this would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Dave

works well.

My take on your HDR Dave.

The final image of your daughter is fine but the background is far too light. If you could combine image 3 subject with image 2 background then. IMO. you would have nailed it.

sirhc55 wrote:My take on your HDR Dave.

The final image of your daughter is fine but the background is far too light. If you could combine image 3 subject with image 2 background then. IMO. you would have nailed it.

I agree..

or you could have exposed the shot for the background and added a little fill flash (maybe knock the flash back by about 1/2 stop).. that would have done it also and hopefully kept the skin tones more natural looking..

sirhc55 wrote:My take on your HDR Dave.

The final image of your daughter is fine but the background is far too light. If you could combine image 3 subject with image 2 background then. IMO. you would have nailed it.

Hi Chris,
You mean something like this ?



This is the lightest and darkest exposures, manually merged (via layers and masks) in CS4.
I thought I'd also put a slight graduated lens blur on the background, to give the illusion of more DOF.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Is this version (v2) better do you think ?

Cheers,
Dave