HDR Landscape

[xxpinballxx]

the D40 is so simple to change exposure.....up behind the shutter is an exposure button next to the info button....hold it in nd turn the thumb wheel and you can change it that way...looking through the view finder you'll see how much you are changing it. Takes two seconds. Try it that way....not exactly bracketing in the literal sense but will change the exposure. One big note....make sure you half way press the shutter to switch the exposure. The detail in the tree is great...but the blue tint is putting me off.

[Okinawa]

I agree that it seems blue, looks like a nice picture overall though.

[RussHeath]

Unfortunate that the D40 doesn't support auto bracketing, it was actually one of the differences that pushed me to get a D80 instead. As Pinball mentioned, if you get comfortable with altering the exposure the way he describes you can actually do it quite quickly. You'll also want to shoot in RAW, because that way you can bracket at larger intervals and get away with less total shots than you would with jpegs.

As to the blue cast -- Were you shooting in RAW? If so, just reprocess the files and change the color temperature when doing your tonemapping. I'm not positive, but I think that's available in CS3. If not, think about getting photomatix, which has many more controls for the tonemapping than photoshop. Some people also like a newer program called Dynamic Photo HDR (see link for a thread about it). I haven't used that one myself but it looks pretty slick.

Overall, nice composition and very photogenic tree!

[Lurch]

After playing around with this a bit i think i have managed to clean up the blue cast.

[RussHeath]

A definite improvement from the original, but still a touch on the blue side. The place I notice it now is not the tree but in the clouds, they still seem to have a bluish cast (but much less so than the original). What did you do to clean it up?

[MIKELETRON]

The picture is good and well defined, a little too blue but I think the problem is another one, I think the problem is: Why am I using HDR? Usal answers can be (IMO) of twokinds:
1-to have a pefect lightning.
2-to create a new kind of picture.
In the first istance I think the lightning should already have been perfect, being your tree in a perfect daylight, in the second case I think you should have charged the (very limited anyway) HDR possibilities of Photoshop [still better you should use Photomatix].
I'm sure that the original shot was far superior to this HDR attempt.

For my own I like to use HDR to emphasize glam stuff like glass, shining and reflecting details or dark/heavy clouds and to thake care of great exposure conditions troubles.

Just a couple of examples:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelevannucchi/311613450

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelevannucchi/424768955

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michele...chi/1364250569

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelevannucchi/448927088