Early Experiences with HDR

[Julian Cox]

Hi Guys

 

Let's start by saying that I'm a newbie not just to HDR, but to Affinity Photo itself, so go easy on the sarcastic remarks.

 

I have just tried out the HDR functionality by taking a tripod-mounted set of five exposures on my Sony A72, ranging from -2 to +2 stops.

They were recorded as jpegs.

 

Now in all the exposures, the sky has very little discernible tone, and in the +1 and +2 versions, none at all.

 

When I create an HDR set, the sky is depicted not as a region of no tone, but more like a simulated picture of the northern lights, with successive bands of pale blue, lavender and white. Completely unusable.

 

The likelihood is that I'm doing something wrong. The possibility is that HDR is failing to make something out of nothing.

 

Anyone else had this experience?

[John Rostron]

First question is: is there discernible detail in the sky in the -1 and -2 EV images? If not, then you need to be going for lower EVs.

 

Second question: are the histograms of these negative EVs up against the right-hand side? Again, if they are you will need lower EVs.

 

I have not had much experience of HDR in outdoor/landscape pictures but this would be my guess. My experience of AP's HDR are mainly in buildings, especially church windows, and I find that AP works well, though not as good as Photomatix.

 

John

[Julian Cox]

John - thanks for your reply.

 

I had in fact abandoned the set of photos, so in order to answer your questions, I have retrieved them and re-run the HDR tone mapping.

 

Would you believe it? The strange behaviour of Photo 'inventing' colours not there before was not replicated, and I managed to get a quite usable image. All the same, many thanks for your helpful response.