HDR technique using 4X5 film

[Henry Ambrose]

Not so blunt if you get rid of the awful presets, keep it low strength and learn to use the sliders.
To answer the original question; Photomatix matches-up perfectly two 4x5 negatives scanned in the Epson holder. You just have to be careful sliding the crop frame across and make sure to exclude the border. My egg-cup on the still-life thread is from two negatives. With one negative, I always do three scans when there are whites and reflections. It's a weakness, but I trust my negative but I don't trust the scanner.

If you're gonna use it turned all the way down to "1" why not do it manually.
Its just not that hard.
And you learned something rather than just bought something.

[MIke Sherck]

Thanks, Preston and Andrew! I have that book somewhere but haven't read it in years. I'll look it up and see how it might help.

Mike

[Nathan Potter]

Folks, thanks for the discussion. I procured Photomatix as a first try since it was recommended by Steimueller
and Gulbins and they describe a bit about its use.

As Kirk points out there seems to be high regard for the S-N-S HDR Pro and I assume that is often used in architectural work which I would guess is fairly demanding for capturing reality.

cjbroadbent, the registration of scanned 4X5s was one of my concerns since I could find nothing about HDR operations on scanned images; so your comment is encouraging. Turning down the Photomatix sliders makes sense.

ivan Eberle, for me I'll work with some old exposures for now (4X5 and 35mm) but start using Ektar 4X5 soon.

I'm limited in using Photoshop - have only CS on a Mac G5 with 8Gb. Also not thoroughly adept at PS intricacies. I'm really an analogue person since 1942 when my first postcard format image was taken.

Never used a digital camera until a month ago when a D800E arrived. My god! 34 external buttons and switches almost exceed the cockpit controls on my old VP-23 US Navy Neptune plane!

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[timparkin]

I've done this a few times.. I would recommend a manual exposure blend after getting the images aligned in photoshop (or I have used PT-GUI in the past). If you are exposing neg film you shouldn't really need to bracket unless you are dodging the skies (or other areas) quite dramatic amounts; if that is the case then make a second exposure 4 stops underexposed and, again, manually blend.

The nice thing about manually blending using masks is that you can go back and tweak when you notice a f-up. I also then use the 'warp' tool occasionally when I find out a layer isn't quite matching in an area.

Tim

[Brian Ellis]

If the desired effect is a natural looking exposure blend, I think most people will find Photomatix a pretty blunt tool compared to LR/Enfuse (for about a two stop compression) or S-N-S HDR Pro (for up to about a 4 stop compression). None of these programs are perfect but the two I mentioned give you a file pretty close that can be further tweaked or combined in areas with a "straight" image for very satisfying results. I personally can't come close to these results with Photomatix.

FWIW, even at the very top of the Architectural Photography profession, pretty much all practitioners that I know are using some HDR exposure blending technique to one extent or another.

I perhaps should have been more clear - when I use Photomatix I don't just click and print. I use the result as a starting point for further adjustments in Photoshop. I think it's a blunt tool if it's used as a blunt tool but there's plenty of room for fine adjustments elsewhere.

[Kirk Gittings]

FWIW I don't use HDR on film-only digital files. On film I use divided Pyrocat which usually solves my problems. I first bought Photomatix after reading about if from Steinmueller (though I always thought his usage of HDR was not very realistic-I thought I could do better). I read many tutorials and really worked at it. I've never used the presets in Photomatix-only the sliders (the presets total suck). After having used it for a few years I gave up-never liking the results even as a starting point for further work. I got back into HDR after reading some glowing reports from APs about LR/Enfuse I could not get even close with Photomatix to the results of even the basic defaults in LR/Enfuse or later the presets in S-N-S HDR Pro. I've tried pretty much all the programs out therewith some rep including Oleneo-which some people swear by-didn't measure up to the two I mentioned.

[Peter J. De Smidt]

Kirk, did you try Photomatix's Exposure Blending mode? That's what I mainly use with Photomatix. It's much more realistic than the Detail Enhancer. I'll have to give S-N-S HDR a try. Which version do you use, home or professional?

On my system, Enfuse is unfortunately extremely buggy.

[Kirk Gittings]

I only ever used Exposure Blending mode as I am only interested in a natural looking exposure blend as mentioned in one of my posts above. I'm not at home and can't look to see which version.

What is your system? I use LR/Enfuse on both a Mac (10.74) and a PC (W7) and it works fine on both. Have you updated it? There was a new release a couple of weeks back.

[Peter J. De Smidt]

Thanks, Kirk. I haven't tried Enfuse for about 6 months. I'll try the update. I use a W764 machine.

[Jan Pedersen]

Never used a digital camera until a month ago when a D800E arrived. My god! 34 external buttons and switches almost exceed the cockpit controls on my old VP-23 US Navy Neptune plane!

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Good to have you onboard Captain Potter.
Mine's not an E but trying to learn from these "Pro's" here makes me appreciate the simplicity of an 8x10