HDR for the birds

[pdmilesjr]

I know that there are quite a few on the forum that do not particularly like HDR, but I was curious what it would do on my bird shots. I took three bracketed exposures in burst mode and processed them in Photomatix mostly in Fusion Natural with ghosting supression.











It was very hard to predict how these would turn out and I am not sure I completely like the results.

[Topcat999]

I think that they look good, but I question why you even need HDR here? Does it do any good?

[pdmilesjr]

I'm just going for a different look, hoping for more detail, but sometimes getting less.

[mrchile]

I think the best way to get detail is to use as fast a shutter as you can and avoid camera shake. Bracketing for HDR properly changes shutter speeds.
Add the possibly too slow a shutterspeed in one of the frames to the birds movement, and you have the potential for softer shots.
Have you tried other methods for sharpening and adding detail?
For example: How about just tone mapping a single exposure?

[pdmilesjr]

I had a setting on Paint Shop Pro X4 for local tone mapping, but I lost it when my computer crashed and I got bumped back to X2. One of the bracketed exposures was quite slow and I often did not use it.