I feel I need to do some more explaining on HDR.
There are 2 big problems with HDR:
1. Capturing the extended dynamic range by multiple photos with overlapping exposures to create one photo with more dynamic range than a common camera can capture.
2. Displaying the HDR results using our common and available LDR display devices.
The first problem is attacked by many software packages, and when properly stored will generate an HDR picture in HDR format for you. This, by the way, is an art in itself.
The last problem is not often explained and commented.
Not only our capture device (camera) has a limited DR, output devices like displays and printers have the same if not worse limit! So, now you have your HDR picture in the file, how are you going to display the extended range? If you have a DR of 30 stops and your display or JPEG file can only handle 20 stops, how can you ever enjoy the results?
The trick is to intelligent compressing the dynamic range again, where dark passages are highlighted and light passages are darkened. Unfortunately, the effect between dark and light passages of the picture is smoothly transitioned from dark to light, creating the typical HDR look and feel. Most of the time this results in removing DR out of the middle passages.
Of course you may want to compress the DR differently, have more visibility of dark or light passages, however, you might as well just have a look at one of the original pictures you took.
One can simulate HDR look and feel effects, for instance with Lightroom, see:
Using Lightroom to simulate HDR effects
But, these results are NOT true HDR pictures.
In a few pictures, you could see the results as follows:
Attachment 34515 Attachment 34516
Combining multiple pictures:
Attachment 34517
A photo with the typical "HDR" look, looks like this:
Attachment 34519
Now, look at the sky, around the trees you can see the strong halo effect.
This is caused by highlighting the trees that are dark and darkening the sky that is light. This result is typical for Photomatix.
It is easy but "not so very good" in my opinion.
This effect you can of course get with one picture as well, however, as stated before, it does not make it a HDR picture.
I hope this somewhat long post helps you understand.
Have fun!
- Bert