So on our trip to Niagara Falls, we only managed to stop at the falls the first night. It was cold (and the other days were colder with rain/snow/sleet), but I had the thought to try some HDR to see about getting a nice shot of the falls but maintaining the color from the lights.

The results are mediocre at best. In particular, the bottom right corner is screwed up in the shadows (and I don't know how to fix it), and it seems (at least with the green lights) the color has shifted a bit.... but being my first attempt, I figured I'd share just the same.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 22mm, 2.5, 1.3, 0.6, 1/6, 1/3 sec respectively at f/4. ISO 800. RAW processing in Adobe Camera RAW and HDR processing Adobe Photoshop CS5.

If you mouse over each smaller thumbnail, you will see the series of shots used to create the HDR image. Individually, you can see that no single shot could capture everything - either the lights on the falls would over expose or the shadow areas would just become fields of black.

Looking at it again really illustrates just how bad the HDR processing is, and I definitely think it warrants trying another processor to see if I can come up with better results... but for now, you get the idea.

- Bill