It's Sunday #3 for our weekend. Time to work on Goal #1. After reading the HDR Photography Explained article, I started paging through my camera manual to see if I could follow the step by step instructions. I had no idea I had the auto bracketing function on the Lumix! Shows me how much more I need to learn about my camera. The auto bracketing feature allows you to take three photos in series with different exposures. You can set increments of ±1/3EV, ±2/3EV, or ±1EV.
I read that Photoshop CS4 has an HDR automator built in. I also installed a trial version of Photomatix Pro. I tried the HDR processing in both Photoshop and Photomatix for comparison. Even though I don't understand all of the concepts and vocabulary associated with tonal mapping, etc, I think Photomatix has a much better interface for HDR processing than Photoshop. Photoshop's "Merge to HDR" script prompts you to open a set of HDR candidates to merge and it does its magic. You can do a little post processing (choosing 8/16/32 bits/channel, change the white point, and upload a different response curve) but you don't have any say with how it initially aligns the content of source images in response to movement. Photomatix essentially does the same thing, but it gives you a big set of processing options to choose from for source matching, noise reduction, artifact ghosting, etc. Once it's done processing the initial output, you can work with the tonal mapping if it needs any additional tweaks.
The first set of photos I took were of the begonias and the Japanese maple. It's windy today. I waited for breaks in the breeze, but it really didn't make much of a difference. Aligning all the image components didn't work very well. You can see a ton of movement in attempt #1 and #3 below. I also had the EV setting at -1 to start out with so after the auto bracketing, the EV range was shifted. Will gave me a great idea to try the light in my drawing room and I think it worked very well. The Photoshop merges are under-saturated and the contrast is off in my opinion. For my first try without any kind of manual post-processing, I think Photomatix wins. Now I need to learn what it all means and how to do it myself.
Attempt #4: Drawing Room Light
Aperture priority
f/4.0
ISO 400
Macro
| Photoshop |
Photomatix Pro |
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Attempt #1: Begonias
| Photoshop |
Photomatix Pro |
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Attempt #2: Japanese Maple
| Photoshop |
Photomatix Pro |
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Attempt #3: Japanese Maple
| Photoshop |
Photomatix Pro |
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