hdr pushes ur photo color range, making it very beautiful. but if you over do it, it becomes unreal, some likes it that way.
i am a fan of realistic hdr, still learning, share with you an example i did recently.
This is what you get from normal exposure. as u can see nothing spendid.
This is an under expose photo. The sky is nice, but trees gone.
This is an over expose version, the trees are nice, but the sky is gone.
hdr pushes ur photo color range, making it very beautiful. but if you over do it, it becomes unreal, some likes it that way.
i am a fan of realistic hdr, still learning, share with you an example i did recently.
but results wun be that good. cos no matter what, there will still be movements, no matter how minute. and when you do HDR with it, what happens is that the end result becomes slightly blurred, cos of the misalignment of the images. its exceptionally obvious when u do a 100% crop of edges of buildings, trees etc in the pict.
my recommendation is still best to use a tripod. i will be using one for my next HDR venture.
Ok, the consensus is that there is nothing wrong with my cam nor lens, and it's poor metering in a high contrast environment. I set it to either matrix mode and don't use Active D-Lighting (it screwed up a few photos once).
parampita and Benosaurous, thanks for posting your HDR photos. They really solve the high contrast issue. Will certainly give it a shot.