First want to start by thanking SMOOTH for two super lessons that both ran well over the two hours of time I paid for. Highly recommended.

As a newbee I am having trouble working on room interiors and balancing the window light. Creating 3 different exposured images from one RAW file (D300) and converting those 3 exposures into an HDR image does not produce good enough results for my purposes. To create an HDR image I would normally shoot 4 or 5 RAW exposures 2 stops apart, but doing that for all 8 pictures needed for a Panoweaver panorama is not only a lot of work, I'm not confident the resulting tonemapped images will blend perfectly into a panarama?  Using flash or strobes to balance the window exposure would be difficult with the Nikon 10.5 fisheye, as well as resulting in flash overlap into the next image in the panorama. What's the answer? I'll bet it's easy to those who know what they are doing - unlike me! 

Hi Chris,

Firstly is is a misnomer to call any of this HDR because in fact it isn't though it seems to be the every man and his dog are calling Tone Mapping HDR. I prefer to call it IDR (Increased Dynamic Range) or WDR (Wide Dynamic Range).

Now to answer your question I should think that 3 bracketed shots should be able to cover blown out windows. Though you might very well be better off using Enfuse to do your fusing/blending. It is also possible that you need to set your average shot 1 stop down from the light meter recommendation (EV-0) and shoot your bracket shoots as wide as you can from that point. It should also be noted that the bracketing should be done via shutter speed only and not by adjusting the aperture. I would recommend you use the cameras inbuilt bracketing feature.

If you can send me a sample set of images I'm willing to take a look and attempt to blend them to see what the result can be based on a few different methods.

Regards, Smooth

For HDR (or IDR) I normally take three bracketed RAW shots 2 or 3 stops apart and have no trouble blending those into one tonemapped image using Photomatic. That's fine when only one is working with only one image.

I guess my question is - for a stitched image - do I create a tonemapped image for each of my 6 x 10.5mm shots, (a total of 18 exposures) and 2 tone mapped images for zenith and nadir (6 more exposures), finally blending those 24 exposed images down to eight and stitching those eight tonemapped HDR's with Panoweaver? I am thinking each of the eight tonemapped images could be slightly different, resulting in a strange looking final stitched image?

Or should I create 3 different stitched panoramas (one for each exposure) then blend the 3 stitched images with Photomatix blending them down to one tonemapped image? Am I making sense?  I'm not sure even I understand what I'm writing!!!

It seems each tonemapped/finished image has a slightly different look and if I used the former approach I could get a very odd looking stitched picture.  I guess the answer might be to try it both ways and see what happens?

I don't know if this helps, but I generate a tonemapped image for each shot. I use an 8mm Sigma fisheye, so I'm doing 4 shots around plus zenith and nadir, with 2 exposures each.

I then stitch the tomemapped images and save as a layered Photoshop file. I opne the Photoshop file and move the zenith and nadir layers to the top and then feather out all the masks accordingly. Occationally, ther will be one or two layers that look either darker or lighter than the others. In those cases, I make adjustments in Photoshop.

Here's one I just completed:
http://www.tulfra.com/one_commerce_center/3775_park.html

I did take a look at your URL.  10:40am 25Apr08 Central Texas Time

Received Java Console notice below:

IE 7 and Sun Java Plug-in 1.6.0_05
Using JRE version 1.6.0_05 Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM

On Loading Tourweaver page:
Exception in thread "RefreshThread" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

Clicking on Still Images:  Images were displayed properly

Warehouse Ceiling
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-3" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

Floor View 1
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-3" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

Floor View 2
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-3" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

Floor View 3
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-3" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

Same for remaining views

Clicked on Front Entrance, Lobby, Floor and Loft
Received same Err but No panoramas displayed

Maybe your panoramas were not ready for viewing, but still received Err's on still imaging