My first HDR

Playing with Photomatix (OSX version) to create my first HDR. This was a quick experiment to see how the process works rather than an attempt to create a fine image. Hence you see artifacts of the exposures being taken at a slight delay, such as the moon shifting.

I was returning early this morning from taking my wife to the MARTA station and noticed the moon in an interesting position above the house with the sky just beginning to brighten from the sunrise. Setting up my camera on a tripod and taking my first exposure, I suddenly realized the SBR was too high and instantly thought of this software that QuasiJones had pointed out to me here.

The software is very easy to use. Take three bracketed exposures (preferably in RAW) and load them into the software. It adjusts for slight misalignment and produces the HDR which you then need to weak the tone mapping a little to achieve the final result. You can play with the settings to get anything from a very mild effect, to a very dramatic albeit unnatural one.

Here are my three bracketed* originals.



* Note: I didn't use the bracketing function in the camera, but instead manually exposed these as follows 0.8s @f5, 0.5s @ f8 and 1/8th @ f8. All were at ISO 100 using a Canon 20D with the 17-85mm IS-USM kit lens.