Topic: Hardware / Most reliable gear you ever owned?

I think my phone and iPad Touch :)

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Topic: Off Topic / The sense and nonsense with HDR

Hi, I think the picture is very realistic – but still spectacular. As for me still a little bit irritated, the Halo’s on the edge between the sky and mountains, which are attributable to the software used.
In my opinion, such images are far more valuable than this surrealistic painting!

Topic: Off Topic / The sense and nonsense with HDR

I agree in part what he says Gerhard. In fact sometimes people exaggerate, posting photos absurd. Of course, maybe beautiful to see but little to do with true HDR. The boundary between surrealism and photo real is very thin, so each of us interprets it in their own way, but the excesses are not good for a site dedicated to HDR, and new photographers who are dedicating themselves to this technique recently, and could easily be taken off the road. I tried to interpret the idea of Gerhard with my photos posted today: http://hdrcreme.com/photos/20647-Watching-the-s…. I am on the right track?

Topic: Off Topic / The sense and nonsense with HDR

Hello all off together.
I am chasing behind for some time now this forum and am really disappointed.
So I’ve now logged in to write a review once …
It should finally be clear once all that HDR will only improve the dynamic range of images and is not meant to create hyper-realism and surrealism.
There are at Flick’r and other platforms enough negative examples of this nonsense. HDR A website should also deal with HDR and not applied incorrectly Tonemapping!
I have on my site (http://www.hdr-foto.at) quite accurately pointed out, what keeps one of the inventors of HDR by these developments and it should all reflect on what HDR really means.
I am of the opinion that more than 90% of the images posted here are not HDR but that `s 60% in the category of “hyper-realism”, and 30% in the category of “Surrealism” should be sorted. Maximum 10% of these images correspond to what HDR means: increasing the contrast volume – nothing else! (http://www.hdr-foto.at/technik/hdr-oder-surreal…)
The second issue that the members of certain groups in praising each other and themselves only when criticism comes from outside this is immediately answered negatively. Too bad about the platforms …

Greetings Gerhard

Topic: Advices and Comments / Man at work

This is a nice place of sharing ideas and knowledge.For this I am here to declare my new 3D phones special offer for you.Just try it once, your idea about mobile phone using will be changed.here is the link for you..

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Topic: Off Topic / Rating

DOUBLE YAWN ON A TIRED AND OLD SUBJECT. People just post your stuff, who really cares what people think. They like it, or dont like it. So what just keep shooting.

Topic: HDR Subjects / Old Trucks

Yeah. I feel the same way about parking lots.

Topic: HDR Subjects / Old Trucks

One of the problems with HDR is that there are certain shots that have become clichés. I don’t need to see any more photos of old rusty trucks on grass. There are more, but this is the one that is starting to drive me crazy.

Topic: HDR Photoediting and Techniques / What exactly do we expect???

HDR could be considered as some sort of art photography I guess and I do not mind “painted” look if it works for the shot
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Topic: Software / WWW.OLONEO.COM

great ideas… it is something that must read for the others to know
i want t share iphone apps

Topic: Off Topic / Rating

Yawn? Do you look to pick fights with people online?

Topic: Off Topic / Constructive Criticism

Then post something and we will criticise it for you !!!!!

Topic: Off Topic / Constructive Criticism

I love being criticize for as long it’s constructive. I’ll take it positively.

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Topic: HDR Photoediting and Techniques / What exactly do we expect???

The “purpose” of HDR is to do whatever you like with it. Some photographer prefer a natural look, some prefer a hyperrealistic look, and others prefer a more artistic (or cartoon-like) look. Are any one of these approaches “right” or “wrong?”

No.

What some people probably object to when they see “outlandish colors or saturated hues” are images produced by people who don’t particularly know what they’re doing. You can abuse all kinds of things and HDR is one of them. There are some perfectly putrid photos posted on this site created by newbies who don’t have an understanding of photography or HDR, but it “looks cool” to them. The best we can do is gently point them in the right direction and hope they get it and not go away mad.

Topic: HDR Photoediting and Techniques / Halo ?

The micro-smoothing slider should be your first line of attack for halos. Slide it to the right. You can use the highlights smoothing slider 2nd.

Topic: HDR Photoediting and Techniques / Workflow

There are many good books available from Amazon.com on HDR. Trey Ratcliff has an excellent tutorial at http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial.

Topic: HDR Photoediting and Techniques / 2 Photography Tips That No One Else Will Give You But I Will

Tip #1 will make you a better photographer. Tip #2 will make you a better HDR photographer.

TIP 1: THE ZONE SYSTEM SIMPLIFIED

Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, Ansel Adams and Fred Archer came up with a technique for exposing, developing, and printing black and white film called The Zone System.

This was around 1940, when things were very different. People read newspapers. Men wore hats. Back then, people had to know a lot about photography in order to call themselves photographers. That’s because back in 1940, photography was hard. Well maybe not hard, but you had to learn a lot. You had to deal with manual exposure meters, film, developing chemicals, enlargers, and photo paper.

Today, digital photography has put photography in the reach of just about anyone who wants to take photos. Taking pictures is now easy. Anyone can take a decent photo. You can even take a picture with your cell phone and get a decent image.

So what does this have to do with HDR photography, I hear you asking. Fair question. In the Zone System, there are 11 zones, 0-10. At the 0 end of the scale, you have pure black. At the 10 end, you have pure white, which we used to call “paper white” back in the day. In between zone 0 and zone 10 are nine shades of gray. In a black and white print, each element in the photo can correspond with a specific zone.

There’s are two thing that are allowed to fall into zone 10. The first thing is lights. Streetlights, bare light bulbs, the sun. You get the idea. The second thing is called specular reflections. Specular reflections are reflections of the sun (or bright lights) on metal or glass (or water).

Other than what I described above, NOTHING belongs in zone 10. Not pieces of the sky, not sides of buildings. Not bits of sidewalk. Not white clothes. Nothing else. If you don’t agree with this, you’re calling Ansel Adams an idiot, and if you call Ansel Adams rude names, his ghost will visit you in the night and haunt you.

Modern digital camera sensors have problems recording a complete tonal range. So if you take a photo in a scene that has high contrast, the highlights are going to overexpose and get blown out…

Into zone 10. Where they’re not supposed to go.

HDR photography was developed to compensate for this problem. By combining multiple exposures, you can retain detail in the highlights and in the shadows (hence the name “High Dynamic Range”).

Follow me just a bit more on this. If nothing in a photo is supposed to fall into Zone 10 besides what I’ve already described and HDR photography was developed to fix this problem, why in God’s name are people posting HDR images on this site with big honking areas of completely blown-out highlights?

I don’t get it.

I’ll tell you what really cheeses me off: when I see a photo with big blown out chunks of cloud or sky or in what’s supposed to be stone and then some clown rates it with a 10 and then writes “Perfect.”

Blown-out highlights aren’t perfect. They show others that you aren’t serious about learning your craft. Some people will tell you your image is perfect, but those people are clueless, and you shouldn’t listen to them.

TIP 2: HALOS

Halos around buildings, trees, and anything else that is adjacent to sky are bad, so don’t have them in your HDR photos. Halos scream out, "Hey, look at me over here, I’m a newbie and I haven’t bothered to learn the basics of HDR! If you’re new to HDR, you might think they look kind of cool. Trust me, they don’t. Halos in HDR are about as cool as wearing a Justin Bieber T-shirt.

You might post an image with awful halos and find some people saying, “Wow. Great image! This is a 10 for sure!”

Don’t listen to those people because they are not your friends. If you could see them, you’d see that while they were telling you what a great photo you just uploaded, they’re wearing Justin Bieber T-shirts.

They may be nice to you, but they won’t help you learn.

In Photomatix fixing halos usually isn’t a big deal. It’s a matter of moving the micro-smoothing slider to the right a bit. If that helps but doesn’t fix it completely, try moving the highlights smoothness slider to the right as well. If you still have some haloing, try decreasing the strength a bit. If that doesn’t work, experiment with the software. There aren’t that many controls. You may stumble across a fix.

If you still have some haloing, you can try fixing it in Photoshop. One thing that works for me is to crate a duplicate layer and set the layer style to Darken. Then I set the burn tool to 3% or so and to “highlights.” I’m not a Photoshop whiz. There are probably better ways to do it.

In a parting note, it’s ok to ask for help. There are people who are willing to help you.

I have to stop now. The mailman has just arrived with my new Justin Bieber T-shirt. I hope it fits.

Topic: Off Topic / Rating

YAWN…

Topic: Off Topic / Rating

Some solutions:

1. The solution to the problem of postings not being posted early enough for people in other countries to rate them is to have each photo count for the day that’s 23 hours and 59 minutes after it was posted. This way no photo can be voted “best of the day” until it’s been on the site for a day. So you’d have “Yesterday’s photo of the day.” That would be the fair way to do it.

2. To the problem of 1 bombs, which frankly, is the reason that I left this site last year, just make it a requirement that only people with, say, 6 photos posted are allowed to vote on images. If you haven’t posted anything, you can’t vote. What is the value for users of letting people with no posted photos vote on the photos of others? In my opinion, if you aren’t a photographer who’s willing to post photos, you should be able to create an account but not be able to use any of the site’s functions, including messaging, forums, comments, or voting. Once the user has uploaded the required number of photos, they should then be allowed to use all the site’s features.

Since people who pay to use the site are likely to be serious, you could also set it up so that only Creme Plus member can vote, but in the current economy, that’s probably not a good idea. The other solution to malicious users is to have the site look for people who give out large amounts of very low ratings and don’t leave comments. Their accounts could be suspended. The easiest solution is to eliminate anonymous voting, combined with requiring a specific number of postings before allowing voting/commenting.

Topic: Off Topic / Site Functionality Problems

Another problem that’s been going on for a while is that you can vote and comment on a photo and it might seem like it didn’t work. So you click it again and instead of a message saying that you already voted on this image, it shows up twice.

Also, there should be an option to edit comments.

Topic: Off Topic / Constructive Criticism

I agree about the voting. Comments should be enough. And people should be able to check off whether they want to receive comments or not. What’s the point of voting when you can’t give a photo anything lower than a 7 for fear of retaliation, even if you have constructive criticism to offer?

But methinks the actual reason for the voting is that it encourages people to come back to the site, and to spend more time on the site. This increases the site’s traffic. More traffic means the possibility of selling more ads. That’s how it works. And you can’t fault the site’s creators for it because they’re providing a service that’s basically free.

Topic: Off Topic / Site Functionality Problems

Here’s one: http://hdrcreme.com/forums/4/topics/97

Topic: Software / WWW.OLONEO.COM

Photomatix beta version 4 is now available for download from hdrsoft

Topic: Off Topic / Spotting Code

Sorry it is well gone.

Topic: Off Topic / Trey's HDR DVD

Has anyone shelled out the cash for Trey’s DVD? If so is it worth the purchase? And before anyone sends me a message saying find out for yourself, I don’t have nearly $400 to shell out unless its really going to help me. Just thought if any HDR gurus that follow Trey extensively here has plunked down the money for it. Seems like Trey’s a good guy but, lately his enterprise has turned into a cash cow. Nothing wrong with making money. More power to him its the way of the world but, its starting to get a little too expensive for me to follow him and be like Mike. I’ll still look at his site from time to time. To reiterate I’d like some info if any can give it.

Thanks All.

Labrat