Day 16: The pros and cons of HDR

Spurred on from my HDR experiment from the previous day, I wanted to make another attempt to get a dramatic, highly detailed picture. However, I discovered that there are some times where the HDR rendering of a scene isn't necessarily better than a simply contrast-masked picture of the same scene, it's just different.

Bridging the Charles River - Watertown, MA

Contrast-masked

This photo was processed using the properly exposed photo and this contrast masking tutorial.

Pros:

• Deeper shadows
• Reflections in the water are sharper
• Waves in the river are sharper
• Sky looks more realistic

Cons:

• Bridge detail is lost
• Sun reflection is pretty flat
• Sun breaking through the clouds is lost

HDR

The HDR rendering of the photo was created using 13 (I think) different exposures, Photoshop CS2's "Merge to HDR" command, and and Photomatix tone mapping filter plugin.

Pros:

• Slightly dreamy effect
• Bridge gains detail
• Light reflection in the water has more color on the outside
• Sun is shown breaking through the clouds in places
• The color of the bridge is shown

Cons:

• Moving water is blurred
• Reflections are more blurred
• Instead of revealing detail, some detail was actually lost in the bright spots of the reflections
• Some sky detail is lost

Which one is a better picture? It all depends on taste, and the photo you were trying to achieve. I keep looking at both pictures side by side, and I can't even decide on my own. HDR is a great technique to expand your photo processing repetoire, but shouldn't be looked at as the only way to make a scene look great.