I am going to say yes. I would like to see the original "balance" shot too.
Basically, with the main source of light from the sunset, the lighthouse would not be illuminated in this manner.
It appears to have soft sunrise illumination with the HDR treatment. This is just too little contrast to make it interesting.
I would think with a D800E, the dynamic range should have been adequate, with may be a one-shot/two process blend.
I do think the composition would shine with more conventional processing.
It's "too" HDR for my taste. I don't mind some HDR, but this is a bit much for me at least. I like Dan said above, theres too little contrast and no shadows and it makes everything too soft.
Thank you for your inputs. Here is what I think the "balanced" shot is. just go through ACR with changing any adjustment and then resize in CS6. A few pointers regarding post-processing would be great! Thanks in advance for your help.
Ok, so I see your original mid exposure and just stabbed at it with a layer>saturation>hue change>opacity change>burn (a bit much) sky/clouds>flatten>selected foreground elements and added a small amount of contrast.
I think it's a very nice shot, but the HDR processing has killed all the blacks and shadow tones. Whenever I do HDR, I see the HDR rendering as the first part of the process. The image then needs to worked on in photoshop to return some realistic tonality and usually sort out colour issues and often halos that the HDR processing causes.
If you open your image in photoshop and check out the histogram, you'll see just a big hump in the middle with no blacks or whites. I hope you don't mind, but I've done a quick levels adjustment to your image which I feel gives it a more balanced tonal range, at least to my eyes.
It is a lovely scene, and I love that rustic brick building.
David, Wayne,
Thank you for your pointers. I see what you and the others are saying. I attempted again with just 2 images. I think this looked alot more natural then my first attempt. I need to learn more PS knowledge.
I am coming in a bit late on your thread here, but it's been great to see the interaction of others and how much better I like your last version then the first one you posted. You are definitely on the right track now. I think you could bump the saturation up a bit now in it, and especially along the horizon, using a layer mask to just isolate the horizon and to get the orange there to pop a bit more like it would with the sun right behind it would help.
And as you are discovering, there is lot's to learn when it comes to processing. You just need to dig in like you did here with the help of others and start playing and working with the various options. One thing for sure as Dan mentioned in the beginning, you are shooting with a D800E, and our dynamic range with the D800's is really awesome. HDR, unless you want some stylized effect, isn't really needed. Simple blends handle the majority of our shooting situations. Are you using Capture NX2?
