....It's completely not worth the time! maybe if I'm printing, but the gains are lost on the limitations of a display screen.

...and, sadly... I've got a seriously bad problem w/hot pixels. I'd pretty much stopped shooting JPG and only shot RAW for the previous 9 months before sending the camera to get fixed. With the broken screen, I couldn't change from RAW and was fine w/that. Now I could so I did. But whoa, when you look @ the JPG in full rez, it's practically unusable! Hot pixels are pretty much eliminated by Lightroom, so it's back to RAW I see.

Back to the HDR.

Spent time d/l'ing some freeware & trialware. Started w/ Qtpfsgui [I couldn't figure it out nor commit the time], then gave HDRShop a try [too "weird" of an interface, and I didn't like it], then settled on FDRTools Basic 2.2.

Shot a bunch of shots @ f/22 at 13sec, 15sec, 20sec & 30sec, natural dim sunlight, of a glowing tube amp. (I have about a dozen and a half tube amps, so more to come one of these days). Took one of the sequences to experiment.

Loaded 4 images and composed a few HDRs until settling on one once I understand how to work it well. Was surprised at how 'dim' the exposure was out. So I needed to load it back into Lightroom, and fiddle w/it anyway.


So I said to myself, well bet I just take my highest exposure image out of the series of 4 I made this HDR from, and copy the Lightroom setting to it, tweek & output, and I bet it would be close. What do you think?


With more time I probably could have gotten the black levels & wall shading even closer. But I think you see what I mean. I think the detail is lost @ 800 px wide. Looking @ full rez or full screen image on a 1900x1200 screen, I see the HDR image shows the detail of the painted wood of the top of the speaker cabinet better... but does that make all the time I spent making that HDR, then needing to tweek in Lightroom anyway, worth it?

No, not doing that again. I'll revisit with RAW HDR (in an app that supports PEF) but not bothering w/JPG HDR again (ignoring that I won't be shooting in JPG anyway due to the hot pixel problem :ugh

[Spex]

Photomatix PRO is THE tool for HDR. Best one.

[m8o]

I heard a good number of criticisms about that progi, so decided not to try it. I am totally counter to HDR for the purpose of producing an overly boosted overly saturated un-natural image. For me, HDR is all about the dynamic range, and bringing out the detail in the dark & lights, which if those images are looked @ full screen, it will be seen does come through in the HDR better. But I see now however for producing an image viewable through JPG on a screen, from JPGs as a source, that's nothing I can't do in Lightroom w/the Recovery + Fill-Light + Black Level + Clarity + Saturation sliders.

[raz-0]

I think part of the issue here is that your pic is not a very good candidate for HDR to begin with.

Thr bright areas aren't really bright, and the dark areas aren't all that dark. The ffew that are, you don't want to see into, like the inside of the horn, which you can see into better in the HDR shot, but why bother?

Then there are things like the wood grain. HDR is basically compressing exposure. Without boosting contrast or saturation, your wood grain becomes flatter and less differentiated.


Maybe a dimly lit shot of an amp all warmed up exposed for the tube glow. Then go brighter from there. The compositied might then exagerate the glow while still giving you the detail of the amp.

Of course, you might just not have gone for enough range to make it interesting. On your most exposed shot, was the histogram shoved way to the right?

[dave sz]

Photomatix PRO is THE tool for HDR. Best one.

no, its actually a pretty bad app. cs3 works much better..

[m8o]

Actually, raz-0, that type of finishing is a very good point. Lowering the Gamma achieves that sort of look I just don't have time to play today. Need to finish a design doc for work. Maybe I'll give it a go however.

The natural light of the room was a good deal dimmer than the finished JPGs there. But as that amp isn't actually connected to a speaker, let alone getting a large signal, it isn't glowing that bright. I need to pull-out one of the three 120w 807 based amps built in the 40s for theater use that I have. The blue "Edison Effect" glow that envelopes the inside of the tube's bulb is something I've been intending on shooting for quite some time.

Regarding the exposure on the 2nd shot. I'm not using the computer I pp'ed it on. But from memory, not totally. I believe I
- set brightness to +20
- Exposure may have been -1.0 otherwise 0
- However where I really did the boosting was in the exposure curve. Lightroom allows you to make change your contrast curve from linear, to medium, to high. For things like this, I start with linear, the medium bright went to +67/100, and light-dark areas to +27/100. The bright bright areas may have been set to -10.

So ya, all in all, the "center" of the histogram was boosted, while keeping the extremes where they were. But, I did the same to the HDR processed image I got out from FDRTool too. The levels were just a tad lower.