Hi everyone,
I’m new here and have been learning Darktable for ~4weeks. I have learned much about Darktable here but now I have a problem for which I cannot find documentation an answer.
I’m using a Sony Alpha 6700 and I shoot in raw. I have multiple AEB shots from my last vacation and I’m trying to create HDR images.
So now I’m using the builtin ‘Create HDR’ function in Darktable by grouping and tagging the AEB shots first (5 with 1EV difference each) and then create a HDR.
For ungrouped AEBs Darktable uses the information from the darkest picture, by accident I found out that DT creates different HDRs depending on the group leader.
I’m wondering now if the correct way would be to have the darkest picture as group leader, create HDR, and then change the group leader later?
It seems to me like a bug, but maybe there is some reasoning behind it?
I personally have never had any real success with the HDR merge feature in DT and if I am honest I have not seen any benefit of HDR merge from raw files. If you or anyone else has had or have in future success from RAW file HDR I would be very interested. In my experience a single exposure that has not clipped the highlights in all three RGB channels gives good results without resorting to HDR. HDR was important to me when I worked JPG files but I have had no success with Raw files to get better results than I can from a single exposure.
I am happy for someone to shoot me down in flames and provide evidence that HDR is a worthwhile pursuit with RAW files.
Sorry I haven’t been able to provide a helpful answer to your post.
If someone else is interested: I’ve compiled the latest master branch of libraw and the latest master branch of hdrmerge while changing the buildconfiguration to use this manually compiled libraw version and the lua script works perfectly now.