HDR for bad light

[iangreenhalgh1]

Good light is rare here so i have to battle gray, dull overcast all the time.

HDR seems to help:

#1




#2




#3




#4




#5




#6




#7

[Attila]

Help to create nicer photos indeed in bad light, thank you for sharing it!

[my_photography]

How many photos you took for let's say #2 for HDR?

[peterqd]

Ian, I am trying to be helpful here. You obviously take great care and a lot of time manipulating your pictures but very little care and time choosing your subjects.

[Attila]

[Attila]

Peter has right, better subjects help more to understand your Technic.

[ilguercio]

HDR is good when it helps you capture all the difference in the lighting that might be in the scene.
The minimum requirement for an HDR picture is 2 exposures (one for the shadows and one for the lights) so you can merge them later in post. A bit like superpanoramas and focus stacking, the series of pictures will provide you much more detail that would not have been there with a single shot.
You can't just grab a frame and try to squeeze everything out of it, there are a few limits you can't go past by photographying the normal way.
What the mainstream HDR population does is introduce exagerated levels of contrast and color grading so the image looks more appealing but in practice the images you posted probably have less detail than a good raw file correctly exposed and postproduced.
Images can be good nevertheless but if you try to be "technical" you should know that you are not going into the exact directionby doing this.
Double exposure and merging is the best way to achieve a properly exposed picture in harsh light conditions, this is a fact.
It's even better than using soft ND filters because the line of separation isn't always straight or easily detectable.

[yinyangbt]

I sometimes use my NEX3 on HDR mode exactly for such bad light . For my taste ,the results are more on the natural looking .
http://forum.mflenses.com/flektogon-20mm-on-nex-3-t48644.html see the second image in the first set and the last twoo in the second set of pictures in the link.

[martinsmith99]

I prefer the original pics to the HDR ones.

I'd rather use a layer mask to adjust levels, or better still, wait for the right light.

[Orio]

[Aanything]

[yinyangbt]