(This post is actually forum conversation with a coworker. I thought the content might be useful for others.)

A few notes I’ve learned as I’ve tried to figure HDR out. I’ve started turning EVERYTHING on manual:  focus, white balance, and exposure. I used to stay in my usual aperture-priority mode, but noticed on my D200 that when I do auto-bracketing, it seems to do a new exposure reading between each exposure and I could get shots that were not really -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, but maybe -2, -2/3, 0, +1 1/3, +2. Photomatix seems to take it in stride, but it still bugs me so I fix it by setting the exposure to manual and then doing the autobracket.

And yes, I agree that having plus and minus two stops usually works out best. I would like to have a two-stop increment option on the autobracketing so I could just do a -2, 0, +2. I’ve seen a comparison between images using those three images and the same HDR tonemap that includes the -1 and +1 and there’s very little difference.

Something else I’ve found is that I need a camera with a faster frame rate. Like in the shot above.

It was hand-held, which I don’t like to do, but not only was there camera movement between shots that Photomatix handled fairly well, but there was also movement in the river and boat, which is really bothersome. I guess I could take the tonemapped shot into Photoshop with one or two of the individual shots and mask in those areas like some of the best HDR shooters do, but wow, what a pain! I think the best solution would just be to buy a D3 and crank the shots in twice as fast.