Some HDR questions

[BeeJayEff]

As I understand it, the main (?) benefit of HDR is to expand the effective dynamic range of an image. So if you have no blinkies, do you get any benefit from taking bracketed exposures ?

Second question, shooting bracketed exposures in RAW, do you apply any PP (e.g. WB correction) to all images before merging ? (I'm using DPP to do the merging of the RAW files, which generates a single JPEG file).

 

[markmullen]

If you've not blown your highlights, or blocked your shadows, you should be able to replicate HDR effects with curves.

If I am doing some HDR I shoot in raw, correct the neutral image (saturation, contrast, clarity, crop etc but not exposure, shadow or highlight) and then copy the corrections to the other images in the series, then process them all as Tiffs and then HDR the resulting tiffs. I've actually got a process recipe setup in Capture One that automates this export and sends the files straight to Photomatix