Fly and fake-HDR

[Thomas Herou]

I'm testing to make fake-HDR's of some flies.
I don't like a big HDR-effect,just a little to increase the DR and details.
This fly is made of 5 different adjusted pictures and a tiny touch of gaussian blur
in one of the layers.

Pentax K20D,FA 50/2,8,2x-S,Ringflash.
1/180s,f/13,ISO100

[denise ippolito]

Thomas, I love the effect you created and the comp. is very nice. Great details and pose. Well done.:)

[Thomas Herou]

Thanks,Denise!
I'm still in a learning-phase,but I think this method can work well
in some cases.

[Nicki Gwynn Jones]

Thomas, this is really good. I love the soft BG and the sharpness of the fly is amazing :)
Best,
Nicki

[Paul Lagasi]

Thomas..very nicely done, like it..can you go into a little more detail on how its done and what software?

[Kerry Perkins]

Thomas, you got a really nice effect with your process. Love the look and you got a nice capture of the fly.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Thomas, the detail in the fly is amazing. Great image:)

[Christopher Miller]

Great detail in the fly, Thomas. Love the effect you got. A slightly different angle might be better next time to avoid the leaf covering part of the fly.

[Thomas Herou]

Thanks for the comments!
Christopher,I know what you mean about the leaf.I have a lot of images with the fly "clean".
But I liked the angle here,and the leaf got sadly in the way.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Great image, fantastic details, too bad about the OOF leaf. I thought HDR was useful in capturing luminosities in a scene that could not be done without multiple exposures. I don't understand what HDR has to do with details, and as a matter of fact HDR, in my experience, has a negative effect on detail. Not alot, but even with a very sturdy tripod, and software lining things up, I still think that there are small discepancies between images that very slightly blur the resulting image. Could be wrong. Now it would be possible to combine a number of images of the same subject at the same time, each focused on a point progressively further back, and combine them together.
Any way. Extraordinary image! regards~Bill

[Thomas Herou]

Thanks William!
I agree that in "real" HDR with multiple exposures taken at the same time,the loss of detail and sharpness can be significant!
I noticed in my fake-HDR tests that taking one picture and altering the curves in RAW keeps the details much better,but the HDR-effect is lesser.Just what I want:to increase the DR a little and keep the sharpness and increase details in shadows.