Mark
I like the images for the most part. The lighthouse could have used a darker sky, or a better one. The foreground is a touch light. Maybe a curves layer would improve it. #2 looks very good, and quite realistic. The quad tones are not my thing, but a pure black and white of this might look great. I think the 4th one works very well, and the original helps evaluate it. The last two also look good to me. I quite imagine that in a couple of years, cameras will have an HDR setting, and people will complain about shots that haven't been manually blended to HDR.
the last is the best of the bunch interms of photographic merrit. i however question the need for hdr in these scenes, even for experiments. how can these scense give you any idea of what hdr can do.
try some proper high hdr situations, sunset,sunrise ect.
Thanks Tim, for the comment, I'll try a curve adjustment on the first image, I never thought about HDR through the camera but I suppose it is only 1 step away with cameras already having exposure bracketing settings, surely it wouldn't be that hard to add a HDR feature aswell... personally I wouldn't use it as it would be generic in terms of "there you are take it or leave it" , just like B&W features on cameras, not a good Idea as you might actually want it in colour aswell.
I definatly prefer to manually do it as you can alter the way it looks dramatically instead of a computer telling you what you will get.
Thanks parsons, the reason why I've done these as HDRs is to pull detail out of shadows and midtones, the 2nd to last image has worked wonders as lots of detail has been bought out of the shadows ( a bit of grain aswell because I had to level up the single image beforehand ) the 2nd one as HDR results in a lot more detail in the cloud instead of taking a lot of time using burn and dodge.
That said though I certainly wouldn't go round taking 3 shots of everything to get a HDR of everything I photo, that would just be stupid :-)
I've also tryed taking HDR at a little after sunrise here ( 1st image ) and the 2nd one is because of the bright clouds and dark stone of the bridge.
