First of all, how many images did you use to capture this image? When taking HDRs, it is recommended that you use aperture priority so you maintain a consistent aperture exposure and depth of field. The only thing that should change is your shutter speed. When I shoot outdoors, I typically shoot at F8.0 and ISO 100 or 200 for best quality and the least amount of noise. A tripod is recommended if not required in low light situations. I can see by your photo details that you shot this with an F1.0 aperture. That's pretty shallow for a closeup such as this. Personally I would have shot this with at least an F8 aperture so that it would be clear from front to back and used a tripod. Remember, for macros such as this, you can measure your depth of field in fractions of an inch as opposed to feet.
To illustrate an HDR macro, look at the following image:
As you can see, the flowers are all in focus, but the background is all blurred. I used F8 as my aperture. but because I was so close to the flowers, the depth of field was probably about 6 inches front to back, which was enough to keep the flowers in focus, but blur out the background.
The image consisted of 5 images, shot from -4EV, -2EV, 0EV, +2EV, +4EV. Photomatix was used to combine them and produce a detail enhanced image.
I used my auto exposure mode on my camera at +/- 2 and took 3 photos. I just followed the instructions on photomatix's tutorial, but now you got me curious. Going to have to do it again with more images and see what it looks like.
Auto-exposure mode doesn't always work if you have dark areas or really bright areas.. The camera will try to change ISO, shutter speed, and/or aperture to achieve the best handheld shot. If you have your camera set on auto-ISO, the camera will invariably change the ISO higher with darker images to achieve the best handheld shutter speed, and that opens up the possibility of noise in the darker areas of the image.
Oops silly me! I used the wrong term. I shoot my camera on manual and i chose the auto exposure bracketing option out of the menu, but then i am thinking that maybe perhaps I just am not understanding what you are saying. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to hand my camera to someone and have them show me how to do something. I guess what I should ask that would help me a lot is how do I manually bracket the exposure. I shoot with a canon eos 30d, so if there is anyone out there experienced with using this camera and can answer i would appreciate it. My AEB only goes up to +/- 2 and as far as i can tell that is all my camera could do manually if only I could figure that out. another question, what does EV stand for? (I assume the e stands for exposure)
For most shots, 3 images with an Exposure Value of -2, 0, and +2 will suffice. It is those scenes where you have really bright areas and really dark areas is when you need a larger dynamic range from -4 to +4 in 2EV steps. Many photographers will manually set their exposures in order to get the right range for the lighting they have, but for us consumers, we get the auto-bracketing that makes it easy to get the 3 or 5 images automatically.
Thanks for all your advice. Check out my day four picture. Except for the back ground and the watermark on the picture it turned out more like what I am aiming for.
Try picking a subject with more dynamic range. It looks like you could have done this shot normally without loosing any detail in the highlights or shadows.
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To illustrate an HDR macro, look at the following image:
As you can see, the flowers are all in focus, but the background is all blurred. I used F8 as my aperture. but because I was so close to the flowers, the depth of field was probably about 6 inches front to back, which was enough to keep the flowers in focus, but blur out the background.
The image consisted of 5 images, shot from -4EV, -2EV, 0EV, +2EV, +4EV. Photomatix was used to combine them and produce a detail enhanced image.