Evil one shot HDR via RAW files and Photoshop.

I'm now frankly amazed at how much detail is hidden in camera RAW files.

Original, as shot, no corrections whatsoever (about 90 minutes before sunset, exposed for the sky details)...




Open in Photoshop, minor adjusts for the usual, then click "Copy Image" to open a duplicate to work with.

Now close the original RAW w/o saving, and reopen it, now crank the exposure way up to get back all that shadow detail, and let the sky wash out completely...




Next, select all on the original's copy, and Shift+drag into the one you adjusted for shadows. Now mask for the sky, and paint away to blend 'em. Hardly realistic by any means, highly surreal looking, but amazing at how much info is in the RAW file, both in highlights and shadows.



Step son says it looks like a post nuclear holocaust pic to him.

Yeah, you're right that it doesn't look realistic. But if you went for less adjustment, I'll bet you could bring out enough detail in the foreground to look like what your eyes could probably see and still keep the spectacular sunset colors. 9 zones is now officially obsolete. (Is it 9? I've been away from this stuff for so long that I don't remember for sure.)

The sunset was given 1/4 more exposure while the foreground was given 4 stops.

Now, to be a little more "normal", here's +1/4 stop on the sunset, +1-3/4 stops on the foreground, and the minivan pushed back from there by -1/2 stop (it still kinda glowed too much.)

did with B&W was compress the 10,000:1 brightness ratio that our eye/mind can record to about 25:1 that B&W paper could present (the ratio of the darkest black reproducible to the brightest white reflectance of the paper base).

What HfromH did with Photoshop was exactly what Ansel did with exposure/development and possibly with better results - I'm not sure you can compress tonal scale that much with Ansel's tools.

No, the zone system, or at least the reason for it's existence, is alive and well and HfromH would make Ansel proud.

planned use of RAW + software can lead to laziness and some lost shots if you aren't obsessive about checking your menus.

After I found out how easy it was to salvage an under-exposed photo, I started deliberately under-exposing most of my stuff. Well,I got burned by that when I switched over to .jpg (it was supposed to be temporary) and forgot to switch back. OUCH! I only lost a few handfuls, but it was enough.

for me, uncharted territory.

I try to expose straight up. I used to deliberately shoot all my film and slides at ISO 100 (Kodachrome 64 and Vericolor III) for the same reason...underexposure to enhance color.

I read an Adobe white paper about highlight details recently, and they say you can shoot straight up on exposure and still recover highlights. Seems most cameras won't attempt recovering highlights if any channel hits max...it never checks to see if the other 2 channels are also maxed. They recommend taking the RAW file and reducing exposure by at least 1/4 stop or more, reducing the exposure just enough to get the highlight clipping warning to go out, then use the brightness slider to recover the details.

I don't do it often

The first one looks "HDR", but the rest look damned near natural. Really like #4!

I guess HDR has it's niche, it does work well for mixed lighting sources...getting the interior exposure while not having the outside light wash out the windows, etc.

Most tend to be overdone...like my "example" above. Tends to produce very flat, lifeless images, or very unreal.