Good day,
so I read a bit about bracketing to create HDR photos. I wanted to test this a bit with my RX100 VII, so I took a couple shots with +/- 2 EV just to see how it goes.
Note that I am on Linux, so I don't have Lightroom unfortunately, I use "darktable". I don't know if this is good, but to my knowledge, the only software that can even open the SONY "ARW" files.
Anyways, I took a couple shots with bracketing and tried to merge them into a HDR image. And for some reason I am not happy with the result, in fact I think it looks even worse than the original images. I am sure I do something wrong, cause I am fairly new to this topic.
So below are the 3 bracketed images, -2EV, 0EV and +2EV. I used "Aperture priority" mode of the camera to shoot the pictures, and I used the RAW file format only.
Now I have imported the three images into darktable and used the "Create HDR" function.
I also tried "lens correction", "haze removal" and "chromatic aberrations". The resulting image is this:
I think it is almost worse than the 0EV image. The colors are somewhat dull and it seems somehow blurry, but does not become better when I try "sharpen". So I am for sure doing something wrong with my RAW files. I know this is not a perfect scene for testing HDR, but I expected, using HDR, to have the sky a bit more crisp and detailed clouds, while the grass in the foreground should still be good. Actually, I like the sky in the -2EV image a lot, and in the +2EV image one can see also a bit better the structures between the trees. But in the HDR image, actually nothing is good, so I think I either do it wrong or my camera is not suitable for this?
I have another example. Here is the sun visible in the scene and therefore some parts are overexposed. This is -2EV:
This is 0EV:
and this +2EV:
Clearly, on the +2EV most parts are overexposed, but near the forest, the tree branch structures and so on can be seen much better than in all other images. So I expected I can combine these images together, and have a well visible sky, with the clouds visible, but also the tree branches visible on the forest part in the background. Plus it would have been good if the wood structure on the foreground would be visible. However, this is the result that darktable gives me:
It is good in that sense that the structures of the clouds in the sky and on the wood in the foreground are visible, but the forest is just one black lump. In fact the HDR is here even much worse than all the other shots.
I am a bit confused, because I watched some tutorials about HDR bracketing in Youtube, but most people of course use Lightroom, and there, you click one button and have an almost perfect HDR image. It seems to me that almost nobody used darktable, so I wonder if it is even possible what I want to do?
Do I need now to purchase a Mac just to be able to run Lightroom?
so I read a bit about bracketing to create HDR photos. I wanted to test this a bit with my RX100 VII, so I took a couple shots with +/- 2 EV just to see how it goes.
Note that I am on Linux, so I don't have Lightroom unfortunately, I use "darktable". I don't know if this is good, but to my knowledge, the only software that can even open the SONY "ARW" files.
Anyways, I took a couple shots with bracketing and tried to merge them into a HDR image. And for some reason I am not happy with the result, in fact I think it looks even worse than the original images. I am sure I do something wrong, cause I am fairly new to this topic.
So below are the 3 bracketed images, -2EV, 0EV and +2EV. I used "Aperture priority" mode of the camera to shoot the pictures, and I used the RAW file format only.
Now I have imported the three images into darktable and used the "Create HDR" function.
I also tried "lens correction", "haze removal" and "chromatic aberrations". The resulting image is this:
I think it is almost worse than the 0EV image. The colors are somewhat dull and it seems somehow blurry, but does not become better when I try "sharpen". So I am for sure doing something wrong with my RAW files. I know this is not a perfect scene for testing HDR, but I expected, using HDR, to have the sky a bit more crisp and detailed clouds, while the grass in the foreground should still be good. Actually, I like the sky in the -2EV image a lot, and in the +2EV image one can see also a bit better the structures between the trees. But in the HDR image, actually nothing is good, so I think I either do it wrong or my camera is not suitable for this?
I have another example. Here is the sun visible in the scene and therefore some parts are overexposed. This is -2EV:
This is 0EV:
and this +2EV:
Clearly, on the +2EV most parts are overexposed, but near the forest, the tree branch structures and so on can be seen much better than in all other images. So I expected I can combine these images together, and have a well visible sky, with the clouds visible, but also the tree branches visible on the forest part in the background. Plus it would have been good if the wood structure on the foreground would be visible. However, this is the result that darktable gives me:
It is good in that sense that the structures of the clouds in the sky and on the wood in the foreground are visible, but the forest is just one black lump. In fact the HDR is here even much worse than all the other shots.
I am a bit confused, because I watched some tutorials about HDR bracketing in Youtube, but most people of course use Lightroom, and there, you click one button and have an almost perfect HDR image. It seems to me that almost nobody used darktable, so I wonder if it is even possible what I want to do?
Do I need now to purchase a Mac just to be able to run Lightroom?
