Times Square

[subcmdr]

New member, learning HDR, would like comments on two photos. I'll attach the second separately. This one was taken with Nikon D90, although I've recently upgraded to D7000. Tripod, ISO 200, this was a 3 shot HDR at -2 EV, 0, and +2.

Comments welcome.

[navcom]

I guess it depends on what your goal was with the shot. If you were going for a more extreme "painting" style HDR, it looks pretty good. It looks more like a painting or computer-generated video game type of image. If you were just trying to increase your dynamic range to get some of the detail, it's a bit overdone.

It looks pretty flat and overexposed. I like some of the bright colors but the conversion made it a bit too bright. Also, notice there are almost no shadows on anything. The slight shadows that do exist are not really shadows anymore. HDR is great but you need some shadows to give depth and a sense of being there.

HDR techniques increase the dynamic range of an image in instances where a camera cannot record the whole range and would otherwise leave the shadows too dark and void of detail...in other words, too much shadow. The other extreme is "hyper" dynamic range...or lack of shadows where everything is "in the light". Both ends are unrealistic.

But that doesn't mean that either end can't be art. It's just what your goal is.

[Aleix]

I agree with Navcom, I also believe the cyans are a bit oversaturated.
But it just depends on what's your goal, if you want the image to look realistic or not.

[subcmdr]

I understand your feedback, thanks for commenting. I was going for the artistic look, and I do understand dynamic range. I bracket shots as a matter of routine to use if a single shot doesn't capture the entire dynamic range. Even with ADR set on high, the best exposure for this shot (a -.7 EV) didn't capture the shadows adequately, so I ended up using Photomatix. I later tried Nik HDR but think I still got the best outcome with Photomatix. Obviously, the long exposures had a lot of ghosting in the moving people, so I had to Photoshop the shortest exposure (after brightening it to match the HDR composite) to mask in the sharpest bottom half of the image (the people part), so the "shadowed" area is a combination of a single image taken at -2 EV and the HDR composite. So I'm not sure the "loss of shadows" issue is a manifestation of HDR at all. I think there just weren't that many visible shadows at this time of night, even from the bright neon signs. (Recall that those signs change from moment to moment on Times Square, so you don't always get consistent shadowing.

[windrider86]

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