re: #28 lawhawk

I get how HDR could enhance a scene, but it always seems overdone. It stops capturing the moment and becomes something else entirely.

But then again, my own style is to try and capture the moment as it happens, rather than getting the scene perfect (p-shop/HDR assist).

I have no problem with HDR up to a certain point, as long as the goal is to capture an approximation of realistic human perception. The problem is that we frequently experience a certain amount of blown out highlights and no information shadows, and a lot of HDR photographers create a slightly flat scene in their attempts to maximize the histogram.

You also usually don’t usually want to drastically exceed the combined dynamic range of a human eye scanning a scene, which is typically limited to 20 to 24 stops. That’s a lot of dynamic range, but you only see part of that at any given time as your iris opens and closes, and your mind mentally stitches a gestalt image together, so it looks forced and artificial when a static image tries too hard to duplicate it, like an overly stylistic illustration. Some people like that look, but there’s a reason it strikes many people as unnatural.