Thanks for taking the time to comments guys, much appreciated. I think I do prefer the originals too ha ha, this was more of an exercise for me to see what I could do with HDR than to necessarily create a “better” image. As I said it’s my first stab at this technique.
Dinners: yeah I can see there’s not much extra shadow detail but I thought the highlights in the sky were loads more defined in the HDR version. I couldn’t stop the brightest bit of the sky from blowing without losing loads of detail in the alleyway, and that’s what at the time made me think of having a go at HDR. The second one of the door, yes, I was just going for the style, and deliberately pushed the sliders really far and applied loads of extra sharpening, just as an experiment really. I probably could’ve gone further, maybe I’ll have another go and see how far I can push it.
D in W: good point about the crop. I’ll chop it down tonight and see how it looks. Thanks for the advice.
Dcash: actually this is something I’ve been wondering about most of my shots when I compare them to ones I see on here: sharpness, and the lack of it! I’m a proper novice, but very keen to learn, and any pointers would be really appreciated.
OK, kit lens 18-55 vr. All shot in raw.
Number 1: 18mm, 1/640s, f/8, ISO200, spot metered on the clouds and applied +1 2/3 EC. “Expose for the highlights, develop for the shadows” and all that. The HDR for this one was bracketed +/- 1½ stops.
Number 2: 26mm, 1/40, f/8, ISO1600, matrix metered and 0 EC. HDR was bracketed +/- 1 stop.
Maybe I’m not applying enough sharpening in PP? For number 1 I used something like radius 1.0, amount 50. Zooming in to 100% the sharpening was creating a bit of noise, so I put luminance noise reduction to 5. Maybe that’s softened it a bit? For number 2 I’m puzzled because I went crazy with the sharpening, first in ACR, then again with more in PS. Any thought’s on this lot? Sorry for the essay ha ha
Thanks for all the comments guys they’re really helpful.