ebrunner wrote:
You know, I was thinking the same thing myself. Photomatix has an "exposure merge" setting. Essentially that is what I did. I took what worked from two photos and combined them. I like HDR, but I don't like the funky tones that they come up with all the time. I might have to spend more time looking at non tonemapping HDR processing. Hmmmm. Thanks for your observation.
Those that use tone-mapping are really taking HDR to another level, removing it from the "realistic" into a more 'artsy' category. There are some photos that look good with the extra tone-mapping, but for me the 'best' overall results from "True HDR" are the ones that you cannot tell!! You really have to look at a 'true HDR' photo to realize that the 'dynamic range' is greater than what the camera can actually capture.
Then again, there are images that, in my opinion, just beg to be tone-mapped to the extreme.