(Clarification: When I say "better than HDR" I mean better at blending exposures together than what most people tag as "HDR" on Flickr.)
Example: Background:
I've used Photomatix since version 1.1 (thanks Geraldine!) and have been making HDRs for 3D rendering for way too many years, but I've never been satisfied with the tonemapping that is done to squeeze lots of dynamic range into an 8-bit image for web or print. If it is my RAW processing, it's the horrid noise that I get when I try to squeeze too much out (but I hope a K20D will help in that regard). If it is in combining exposures into an HDR intermediary, then using Photoshop or Photomatix or FDRtools or whatever leaves me with inexplicable results from oddly named controls.
Hot Tip:
But now I've found what I've been looking for:
Enfuse.
This is still a very early-stages and experimental technology, but the results are just astounding. No more silly halos or grainy black junk in my skies, no more weird color transitions between interior and exterior light, and no more "guessing" which settings will yield something I like to look at. Rather than build an HDR (32-bit float) image that can't be displayed on my monitor, this "fusion" takes the best of each exposure and sensibly blends them together, period.
Best Part:
There is a standalone app for OS X that takes multiple bracketed exposures and "fuses" them with a clean and very cool GUI.
Bracketeer from Pangeasoft is the schnizzle-dizzle. And if you create bracketed panos (like I do) some features in Bracketeer are even better than icing on the cake (3D previews!). But the simple fact is that this Enfuse technology is so much faster and simpler and *more realistic* at blending differently exposed images of the same scene, that I've been having fun with it from when it was a Unix commandline utility. Bracketeer just means I can share it with others!
Final Words:
My above example isn't the best in the world, but it shows what can be done. If you have a Windows machine, well there is an Enfuse GUI for you too, but nowhere near as cool and neatly packaged. See
this message here.
The K10D already has one of the best AEB mechanisms for multiple-exposures (5 brackets at 2ev steps!), so this is just a great way to take JPEGs or TIFFs and put them together better, faster, cheaper.
Just my "tip of the week"
-Mark
(BTW, the QTVR of the above pano can be found on my
underconstructed site.)