@Mike_Bing @kofa I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole about Lightrooms HDR merge. I am on this site to learn about and promote FOSS. Sometimes I will make comparisons to paid programs as a comparison rather than a bench mark. Darktable exceeds most if not all paid programs for it ability to give artistic control to the person doing the editing. However, the OP asked about HDR in DT and this is one area that is not a strength of DT. I just point out that since I have access to Lightroom V6 that I find it very good at merging bracketed exposures that are hand held. LR then gives me a 32 bit file that I take to DT rather than continuing my editing in LR. And @kofa LR does not simply take the brightest image, but in fact creates a merged image. The sample image could have been handled with a single exposure, but this is a nice example of lightroom’s ghosting solution. When and if I no longer have access to Lightroom I would like a good FOSS solution. Hugin may be a good choice.
@ mike thanks for your detailed reply which I read last night before you deleted it. It was a well thought out reply and I found it helpful. The truth be told I do not understand if there is an advantage in getting a 32 bit floating point file from any program, let alone Lightroom. I can and have seen the problems of working with 8 bit JPG or Tiff files, but it seems to me these problems go away if you have a 16 bit file. 32 bit seems overkill to me, but maybe there is an advantage I am not aware of and learning is why I participate on this forum.
BTW, another form of merging we do is panorama stitching. When I teach darktable or imaging classes I teach using darktable in combination with Microsoft’s Image Composite Editor for Windows users, and Hugin for users of MAC or people who have Windows and would prefer to use Hugin. Hugin is a great solution and easy to use for panorama stitching. as a side point, in 21 years of teaching photography and imaging classes I have only ever had one single student turn up with Linux.
Have a good weekend everyone, and I hope @Daniel_Spenner has found the information he was looking for.