I am just starting to experiment with HDR. I am using a Nikon D200 and Photoshop CS3. I am shooting 1 stop plus/minus and merging to HDR. It seems that the highlights are always getting blown out much more than the middle image. The shadows are brought up fairly well, but the entire upper end of the curve seems blown out with loss of contrast. I have been experimenting with different methods during the 32 to 16 bit conversion to correct it but have not been so pleased with the results. I can get the highlights back down, but the upper end is fairly washed out with loss of contrast. It seems like the middle part of the curve is also pushed up a bit which would account for the loss of upper end contrast.
I have looked at several tutorials on the net. They don't seem to address this specific situation and how to correct it. Also, the screen shots right after the HDR merge sure look alot better than mine, and don't seem to be blown out at the upper end.
Any help, pointers, links, etc would be so very much appreciated.
Having said that, getting the right range of exposures to begin with is probably the most critical part of the process. Use the camera's histogram to make sure you're getting a nice spread.
And...there is a lot of discussion about this (and other) hdr issue(s) available on the net. Try the Flickr hdr group for one good source.
Photoshop is not terrible at HDR but it's pretty darn close. Your
best bet is to try out Photomatrix at http://www.hdrsoft.com/. Even
the experts say it's better than Photoshop at HDR. You can download a
fully functional free trial version from the site I just mentioned.
It will but a watermark on all saved images. I have been using the
trial version for a couple of weeks now and will be buying it shortly.