I will not say it’s a perfect camera, but I love mine. In fact I loved my X-T1, so when it was stolen I replaced it with the X-T2. The camera is not the only thing, the Fuji lenses are nice too.
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The difficulty being, seeing as the shots were taken hand held, they don’t line up very well.
@chroma_ghost, Ive tried using HDRMerge, and this is the result:
IMGP2647-2648.dng (7.6 MB)
With the HDRMerge mask:
I think this project is getting way beyond my skill set now, so I think I’ll probably end up with just stitching the panorama with the zero ev images, and be done with it 
Yeah, for what I tend to shoot that 56mm is really calling my name big-time… 
I almost pulled the trigger on an X-PRO2 as well. It was not a good day for GAS.
[edit] - we shouldn’t hijack @Brian_Innes thread w/o trying to help him as well. We can continue on a lounge thread. 
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Before I ended up with HDRmerge I did try dcraw-hugin-align-enfuse (Pat’s method) but results weren’t so good, due to images’ qualities of course. In HDRmerge my mask was a bit different, now I re-exported and tried different mask blur radius but the sky remains problematic… nothing one couldn’t “fix” in gimp =)
I think this project is getting way beyond my skill set now, so I think I’ll probably end up with just stitching the panorama with the zero ev images, and be done with it
{full metal bite} — You learn ****** (probably motherfucker) and you die and you learn dying better (says mosquito srgnt to mosquito privato). I feel your pain Brian… often the places I go and how get there… well a tripod it’s just out of the question, and so are lights or inflatable doll, ohhhhhh… even with a respectable WA lens I need to panoramix the heel out of everything… and HDR like a fooool. As if not confy enough, my pentax mirror is a loud piece of sheik and it also twist and shakes. But somedays, thanks ohh lord, somedays manage to bring something that holds the tears {country music now please} === version I QUIT 
version I PERSEVERE 
@Brian_Innes don’t give up, your DNG image from HDRMerge is fine!
I love HDRMerge because masking is so ridiculously easy even though it’s manual. Being hand-held is no problem for HDRMerge. Parallax will be a problem when you try stitching your panorama, but that’s off-topic here.
Here’s the result, processed and pumped-up in RawTherapee:
IMGP2647-2648.jpg.out.pp3 (10.7 KB)
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I’ve found HDR+panorama to be a tough problem when dealing with moving objects, because objects move between bracketed shots (slightly, but still…) and also between panned shots.
I’ve tried many different solutions, and in the end the only way which worked for me was first to fuse stacks to TIF in Hugin, then stitch the fused images together.
But I also found that when the dynamic range is not two large, processing from a single RAW file (the best one among the bracketed shots) developed for maximized for dynamic range, gives much less problems.
As a side note, I hope HDRMerge will support XTrans raw files one day…
I hesitate to offer my comments in the light of the accurate comments above from skilled photographers - (some of my equipment is not the best, pics were usually taken on auto, I’m not interested in producing a very good picture for publication, only an adequate one for sharing online).
For a simplistic approach (holiday snaps, if you like) I created a plugin for the gimp to use three variants of the same raw image (typically “correct” and ±2EV, but occasionally (subjects in the shade) ±3EV.
http://zarniwhoop.uk/three-exposures.html
If you want a large image for publication, my approach is not useful. If you want a small image and a quick process that can be applied to a (large) number of images, it might help.
And yes, there are downsides to this approach, even when the boosted exposure doesn’t produce noise, but for me it speeds up the process a little…
In the past I used to use the “best” exposure, and then spend time creating exotic curves to bring out the detail / roll off highlights. Now, for 90% of my images I just need a little local contrast enhancement (the process softens the merged image), a curve for slight contrast enhancement, and sharpening (plus any other corrections for lens distortion or tilting the camera).
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Please don’t hesitate to participate! We try quite hard to be welcoming of people of all skill levels who use all computing platforms. If we have missed that mark somewhere, please let me know and I will do my best to correct it! (Though I don’t count our sometimes extremely technical conversations as off the mark-- I think people are willing to explain!).
Hi Brian,
Here is my attempt from a single image.
I edited in RawTherapee, to produce as nice an overall image as possible. Key points, highlight recovery in colour propogation mode and graduated filter.
Brian-TMO-IMGP2648.jpg.out.pp3 (10.8 KB)
Then again in RawTherapee to produce a flat looking 16 bit tiff, with just highlight recovery and no clipping.
Brian-TMO-IMGP2648…tif.out.pp3 (10.7 KB)
Then ran tiff through LuminanceHDR, again trying for the best overall output.
pregamma = 0.8
operator = mantiuk06
contrast mapping = 0.05
saturation factor = 2
detail factor = 1
Then used Gimp to merge the best part from each.
Initial output from RawTherapee (jpg) as bottom layer, and output from LuminanceHDR as top layer.
Applied 50% opacity to top layer.
Added layer mask to top layer, all white.
Selected bottom layer and used selection wand to select all the sky.
Inverted selection.
Selected mask of top layer.
Bucket filled black into the pebbles area of the top layers mask (wand selection limits black to just pebbles area)
Selected whole image, still with mask selected of top layer and applied gaussian blur, vertical only, 2 pixels.
Flattened all visible layers and used levels tool to fill histogram (dragged white down to end of peak).
James
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@Morgan_Hardwood, now that is odd, you have managed to get a decent result from my HDRMerged DNG file.
When I try loading it in rawtherapee 5.0, this is the result, with large black blocks on the image:
Not sure if it is an issue with my release of rawtherapee or what is going on, but it’s certainly not helping my enthusiasm for this project :-/
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@Brian_Innes yes as @sguyader wrote, update! It looks like you’re using the old 5.0, while tomorrow we’re releasing 5.3, and your theme is broken - close RT and delete your options file: File Paths - RawPedia
Hopefully you will be able to download a 5.3 build by Saturday.
In the future please don’t resize or crop screenshots - we often miss important info when users do that.
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Thanks - I suppose what I was trying to say is that I prefer a quick and dirty approach, and it possibly offers some of what the OP was looking for. I’ve found this place friendly, but I don’t want to spread my ignorance.
Anyway, I don’t come here often (too busy compiling ad trying to find time to deal with my photo backlog), but this topic looked interesting.
@Morgan_Hardwood, thanks for the suggestion about upgrading rawtherapee. Ive managed to get 5.2 installed, and it seems to be opening the dng from hdrmerge without any issues.
I’ll bear in mind not to resize / crop screenshots in future 
@zarniwhoop, thanks for sharing that technique , and I’ll be sure to try out the gimp plugin.
@james, that’s a nice results from a single raw image. I’d be happy with that sort of output in the final panorama if I ever get around to stitching it.
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