p.3 #1 · convince me exposure fusion, blending, any sort of stacking is way different than HDR
curious80 wrote:
I understand and fully appreciate what you are saying. However in an HDR flow wouldn't these map to things like dodging and burning the HDR file etc? In reality we all do an "HDR-to-LDR" conversion when we process a single 14-bit RAW file to create an 8-bit JPEG. And we make use of not only tone mapping but a number of other editing tools to get the look that we want. Theoretically given a similar level of control during the HDR conversion process we should be able to get exactly the results we want out of the HDR capture. And let me be clear that I am not talking about the capabilities of current "HDR tools", I am just discussing this in a pure conceptual way to understand if given the right tools we can get what we want out of an HDR capture. ...Show more →
As a concept I fully embrace what HDR is trying to accomplish. Whether I take 3 exposures and combine them using software to get the full dynamic range of the light or blend them exposures by hand are in essence different techniques with an identical goal. For me the difference is whether I find it more fruitful to blend the results by hand to better take advantage of the light I captured or handed it all over to some math formulas and said "give me a result".
Obviously that oversimplifies the efforts being put into tone mapping software but at the same time it does highlight the dilemma of how to best present your view of the scene you are trying to create - do you want to have a hand in making it look like something specific or have some software make light mapping decisions for you?
For my own work I find that more often than not I can get single exposure captures the are "pushed to the right" for the exposure histogram that can be made into 2 or 3 different exposure variants from RAW that yield far more useful results for landscape work than actually working with 3 captures. Almost all RAW editing software will allow at least 2 exposure values up or down from the actual camera settings provided you have not blown out the bright end. The primary reason for my bias towards this technique is that almost everything I shoot in landscape work has things that shift positions in the wind. Alignment of the elements is critical to any kind of blending work and mistakes are easy to spot with muddled details in the very places you want crisp edges to stand out. Tone mapping software that I have worked with to date does't really work well with efforts to combine layers from a single capture like this and yes I have wasted far too many hours hand entering the simulated exposure values for the various layers to more than a couple of the tone mapping software solutions.
At least for me I always come back to hand blending where I control the masking between the layers and if I do combine exposures as well as adjusted RAW variants I know exactly where I want these to land to get the results I was composing for when I set up for the shot in the first place. Our cameras allow us to sample the light readings within the framed scene so it is not difficult to determine in advance what will and won't be within the camera's range of dynamic light. One of the real skills in our craft with DSLRs for me is knowing how all of these pieces will need to fit into place when I am setting up for the shot and being able to recognize what I will need to capture on-site to be able to create the image I had in mind in the first place.
