Sony A900/850 DRO bracketing

[Dave Gurtcheff]

Sony has the capability to take one shot with one shutter release, and automatically generate three identical exposures with three different  tone curves. You can then select the best one regarding favoring highlights, mid tones or shadows. I just took a snapshot and the playback, indeed, shows three "different" exposures; one light, one medium, one darker, with three different histograms. Has anyone actually tried this procedure with important shots? I shoot RAW, so will this process only show up in JPGs? Will it actually make three "different" RAW shots? I then wonder if the three could be combined using something like Photomatix Pro to generate an HDR (realistic) image.
Anyone with info using this technique, your input is greatly appreciated. I shoot seascapes, and have tried HDR with 2 stop brackets, and the results have been awful.
Thanks in advance
Dave Gurtcheff
www.modernpictorials.com

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

If you have CS3, CS4 or CS5 you could try "Merge to HDR". That said, I'm not really impressed by HDR. Also I generally have found that there is plenty of information in an image properly "exposed to the right".

I have some HDR samples here: http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Special-methods/HDR/HDR/

I found out a way to handle dynamic range using halftone masks in CS5, to be published in a small write up in a few days.

Best regards
Erik

Sony has the capability to take one shot with one shutter release, and automatically generate three identical exposures with three different  tone curves. You can then select the best one regarding favoring highlights, mid tones or shadows. I just took a snapshot and the playback, indeed, shows three "different" exposures; one light, one medium, one darker, with three different histograms. Has anyone actually tried this procedure with important shots? I shoot RAW, so will this process only show up in JPGs? Will it actually make three "different" RAW shots? I then wonder if the three could be combined using something like Photomatix Pro to generate an HDR (realistic) image.
Anyone with info using this technique, your input is greatly appreciated. I shoot seascapes, and have tried HDR with 2 stop brackets, and the results have been awful.
Thanks in advance
Dave Gurtcheff
www.modernpictorials.com

[Tom Montgomery]

The 850/900 DRO bracketing does not affect the RAW image.  It only affects the JPGs, if enabled.

[Dave Gurtcheff]

The 850/900 DRO bracketing does not affect the RAW image.  It only affects the JPGs, if enabled.
[
Thank you both. Erik: look forward to your article.
Dave/quote]

[wolfnowl]

Eric:  This is getting off topic from the OP, but since the original question has been answered, there's a difference (in my mind, anyway), between HDR and the tonemapping that is often applied to HDR images to create the (often) overprocessed, grungy 'look'.  Vincent Versace has taken to calling his HDR images 'XDR' for extended dynamic range, to separate them from that crowd.  Seems to me there was an article here on LuLa a while back that talked about HDR w/o the extensive tonemapping.

Mike.