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For the longest time, I’ve been using LR for iPad which lacked HDR merge but after getting a MacBook, I’ve been playing around with HDR and Panorama merging a lot more. I recently found a set of astrophotos that I had taken with the thought of eventually giving HDR a try but forgot about this set and just went back to reprocess them in LR. I’m pleasantly surprised with the result.

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For comparison, here’s a non-HDR version with similar but slightly different composition where the lights from the building is completely blown out.

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A lot of folks use stacking to allow for shorter shots effectively HDR’d together.  I used to do that when cameras were in the 6-8mp range, but I haven’t found a great stacking program for the current Mac OS X (unless someone’s has suggestions?).

@beewee, have you considered trying a graduated ND filter turned upside down for this situation?  It might allow a brighter sky with a dimmer foreground (i.e, highlights more like the top photo)?

I love them both, great work!

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On 4/11/2023 at 5:24 AM, davidmknoble said:

A lot of folks use stacking to allow for shorter shots effectively HDR’d together.  I used to do that when cameras were in the 6-8mp range, but I haven’t found a great stacking program for the current Mac OS X (unless someone’s has suggestions?).

@beewee, have you considered trying a graduated ND filter turned upside down for this situation?  It might allow a brighter sky with a dimmer foreground (i.e, highlights more like the top photo)?

I love them both, great work!

I’ve never considered an upside down ND since it would totally crush the dark foreground and lake. It’s hard enough to get enough detail out of the foreground without making the noise too apparent. It’s also a lot less work to expose shorter for an HDR composite than trying to fiddle filters in the dark. Keep in mind that with a grad ND, you’ll need to experiment with many exposures to adjust the filter position and this all takes a ton of time. Lastly, for most normal astro scenes, the ground is usually a few stops darker than the sky.

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On 4/10/2023 at 9:08 AM, Apparitus said:

I think the non-HDR version is better, for me, it looks like it has more dynamic range. Also stars do not have a black dot in their centers. Did you use any tracker? What is the exposure data?

No tracker, just tripod. The HDR composite was shot at:

1s @ ISO 800

10s @ ISO 800

24s @ ISO 6400

Single frame shot was 24s @ ISO 12500

All wide open aperture.

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