As promised many, many ages ago, I've finally processed that set of waterfall photos into an HDR image.

I used a freeware program called Picturenaut to produce the final HDR image. In the end, I like the image but wonder if the HDR was even worthwhile in this particular case (or given the range of exposures I used to built it).

After completing the HDR, here are my thoughts on the results:

• I should have cleaned up the scene some more - at this point, I find all the dead leaves distracting, and a nice clean rock and water scene would have been more pleasing.
• I need to pay more attention to the lens flares and water droplets on the front of the lens because they might not have been distracting in the original shots (and probably not even noticed on the LCD on the back of the camera), but they definitely are noticeable now.
• I should have selected a wider range of exposures to use for this kind of HDR set. Particularly, I should have explored the darker end of the set more - perhaps expanding down a further stop or two.
• I should have figured out what that spot in the middle of the frame was.

All in all, I am actually pretty pleased.

I've seen so many HDR images that have horrible halos around everything that they looked like you were looking at the scene through some crappy 3D vision glasses. As I'm sure you know by now, I am not a huge fan of post production work. I like to get the shot right once in the camera and leave it at that. I'm slowly coming around, but I still don't want to look at an image and tell it has been so overworked and couldn't possibly have come from a camera directly. It works for some folks, and sometimes it looks nice, but it just isn't for me.

Remember to stop back and check out the original post to get a bit of comparison, then drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

- Bill