[Boofers]

I worked hard on this with out knowing what I was doing, I wish I had more depth of field.
can you find the thin focus plane on this messy blur.

[stupot]

sorry boofers but this does nothing me, as you said looks a bit of a messy blur. It has no focal point i'm hunting around the picture for something. looks a nice place though so maybe taken from a different viewpoint this would work well.

[Boofers]

[IMG][/IMG]I used a tripod, their wasn't alot of water to be found as I was looking for some reflection for the hdr. The color was better then the hand held single shots. Anyway, the reflected tree trunk on the left, the peeling bark was my target. I need discipline, I failed during this hike to remember the DOF. I am still hiking though.

[Rob Barron]

The first picture has high dynamic range but as a picture it does very little for me. Like Stupot said, there is nothing to focus on and as you said the area that is in focus is hard to spot as most of it is outside the hyperfocal distance (the area that is in focus).

The second photo is much stronger, the colours are good and the HDR is more effective. I love the beautiful contra-jour lighting of the leaves which contrasts beautifully against the blue of the sky.

Good work and keep up the trials, you have already clearly learnt from your first efforts so I am sure you will continue to improve.

Cheers,
Rob

[Boofers]

Went back and looked over my files and found that they weren't shot correctly for hdr. Tried this and felt it came out better with a better focus. Have to get those settings right.
[IMG][/IMG]

[Rob Barron]

This last shot doesn't work strongly in HDR for one main reason: the entire image doesn't actually have a high dynamic range! There are a few small spots of white within the clouds, the twigs and branches don't get down to black so the range is not strong. I find that the best HDR treatment happens when you have an image that utilises a strong range of tones in the first place.

You also have to be sure that the photos taken, however many you are putting together, have as little movement in them as possible. Because this tree is taken fairly close to, the leaves and branches only need to move by millimetres to spoil the effect of the final shot. It is very important that the original images are as sharp as possible as well.

The second shot with the contra-jour lighting and blue sky gives a lovely contrast so has a good range but I am not sure it actually needed any HDR mixing to make it better than a simple S-Curve would have achieved on its own.

I am no expert on HDR, I only started trying it out recently myself so I am only sharing what I have discovered or have read about as I have sought to learn about this genre of photography. Keep on practicing and may I recommend you start off by taking tripod-mounted shots of subjects which will have absolutely no movement whatsoever, e.g. buildings, sculptures, still life, etc. as this will enable you to get the best final results in your HDR processing.

Cheers,
Rob

[Dave]

Boofers, have a go at this :- HDR Challenge - You up for it ? ( Photomatix, LucasArt, CS2 methods)