One shot vs bracketed

[jessea]

One thing which hasn't been tackled here is the OPTIMUM(meaning you don't have to use a shorter spacing) spacing between shots.My experience,with my camera,3 shots at a 3ev spacing or 5 shots at a 0.7ev spacing is that hdr softwares do better with a smaller spacing,but,in practice,if the dynamic range is huge,I go with a spacing of 3ev and center at -1 because I am much more interested by the high lights than by the shadows.
For Rob,just check your histograms after shooting to check if you captured every thing or not:the most overexposed must be "clean" on its left(but no need to go very far from the left except if you want to fight noise efficiently)and the most underexposed must be "clean" on its right(and no need to go very far from the right).
Last,but not the least:do it manually on a tripod to insure that you captured every piece of light.
And,yes,memory costs nothing compared to the pleasure of enjoying hdr.
Use also the DXO web site to check what you camera can REALLY record dynamic wise.
And,of course,the more you get into the shadows,the more you have noise.
Last but not the least:1 shot=no alignment problem,otherwise...

[ChrisJ]

Here is one Raw shot opened in Adobe camera Raw and saved as +/- 2 stops to make my 3 shots +/- 2 stops apart, here is the result when put through Photomatix Pro


HDR from one image by screwdriver1, on Flickr

Here are three bracketed shots taken at +/- 2 stops put through Photomatix Pro


Whitby_Mar_11_b by screwdriver1, on Flickr

There seems to be more data in bracketed shots

Chris

[jessea]

Chris,I love both but you have lost some details in the high lights(on the ramp)in the hdr one.

[_Provo_]

Now in terms of Optimal I do not think that there might be an optimal for
the reason that every scene carries a different dynamic range, what we can work
on finding is perhaps a good average that let's say 80% of the time is sufficient

Klaus Herrmann does this but he takes 3 aeb shots and converts one of the raws into an
additional set thus giving it 5 shots total to work with.
farbspiel photography - View. Learn. Connect.



you guys remember this shot I took well this was 3 shots aeb. EV +/-2
but you also know I have taken shots covering from EV +/-5
I always say and I know Kev2010 does the same take your +/-5 if you can
and try using all and then do a quick one with 3 or whatever you feel and compare
the results sometimes you will need all the images and sometimes you might need just 3 shots

[mistermonday]

Originally Posted by ChrisJ

Here is one Raw shot opened in Adobe camera Raw and saved as +/- 2 stops to make my 3 shots +/- 2 stops apart, here is the result when put through Photomatix Pro


HDR from one image by screwdriver1, on Flickr

Here are three bracketed shots taken at +/- 2 stops put through Photomatix Pro


Whitby_Mar_11_b by screwdriver1, on Flickr

There seems to be more data in bracketed shots

Chris

Chris, your results are very nice but just for the record, there is no point making the extra 2 false exposures. Firstly you can not create any dynamic range greater than was already captured in the RAW data. Secondly , you can achieve the exact same result in a conversion and tonemapping of the single RAW without wasting your time to process two extra false exposures.
Cheers, Murray

[ChrisJ]

I am aware of this Murray, glad you pointed it out. But there can be situations where there is more dynamic range than your 8bit monitor will show. My camera is 14bit, as, probably, is yours, every time you add a bit to the bit depth you double the amount of data stored. Most of this will just be a more accurate rendering of the data you have, but some might be more dynamic range, it does depend on the shot.

But more than that once your in the 16bit environment of Photoshop you can re-map data into the higher dynamic range. This has been exploited by CS6 Raw converter see the first of Russel Browns favourite new features in this video

Adobe Photoshop CS6 - TOP 6 Features by Russell Brown - YouTube

Adobe Photoshop CS6 - TOP 6 Features by Russell Brown - YouTube

Or number 5 of Gavin Hoey's top 5 CS6 new tools, the one we're interested in is the last one, starts about the 9th minute.

Photoshop CS6 Beta top 5 features - YouTube

Photoshop CS6 Beta top 5 features - YouTube

Now you can create your over/under exposures in PS with full control, you have always been able to, but now without having to pay the price of lowering image quality. It just may change the way I do HDR. The Oloneo Photo Engine can do this too.

Chris

[paulziets]

Chris,

Thanks for the post. Just had a look at Gavin Hoey's video clip and am impressed with what Camera Raw can do. Seems to be much more to CS6 than I have discovered in mucking about with it for the last few weeks.

Regards,

Paul