Hi!
What latitude is depends on a lot of factors. The tonal range of the scene, the dynamic range of the sensor and how much noise you are willing to expect.
If you expose correctly to the right, latitude for overexposure is zero and you are using the sensor optimally. Exposing higher, highlight detail is lost. Exposing less reduces the amount of detail in the darks we can extract.
Modern DSLRs seem to have a DR (technical term) of about 12 stops. But the definition of DR is (maximum signal)/(SNR=1). SNR=1 (Signal Noise Ratio equals one) is the normally used figure in signal processing, but may be far to noisy for shadow detail.
The article here indicates how much information we can extract from a single image:
http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/61-hdr-tone-mapping-on-ordinary-imageFurther discussion about the processing is here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=60082.msg490533#msg490533Something very similar can be done in Lightroom 4 with just three klicks:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=61027.msg492127#msg492127Best regards
Erik
Best regards
Erik
I'm surprised at your comment about '3 more stops', which is more than a sensor's exposure latitude, from what I know. Let alone "6 or more" stops.. I would really want to see proper scientific backing of that quote. If exposure latitude is 6 or more stops, then why is there HDR technique at all? Shouldn't a sensor be able to just capture all those glorious details? And here I'm not talking about a possibility to make 2 shots 3 or 6 stops apart (even though then there will be no overlap in exposure between the two).
As for 'gory' HDR.. I guess it depends on how you do it and to what extent one goes when doing HDR. It's all very personal and some HDR is done in a way that one would have hard time telling it's not a single frame shot (unless that one is a very experienced photographer).