Cameras are usually good for 50000-300000 actuations if not more (Ie mirrorless cameras)

But the issue with using software to do the over/under expose of the image you loose the on site expanded dynamic range. Newer cameras can have some crazy dynamic range, but if you have an older camera or one that just doesn't have it Multiple exposures is about the only way to really get the data you need. and ideally you are doing this to expand you baseline, and extremes parts of the exposure.

Doing this in software from the same image, even is you do have a raw image to work with you are still imited to +/- 5-7Ev in most cases. I think sony can push as far as 11 to 14 but i would need to check my sources. 

With set of images for HDR you move your EV to + and - 3-5 that then gives you a huge dynamic range to get details out of the brights and shadows.

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 9:48 AM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:
I was wondering... would using software to over/under expose an image be the same as taking 3 images which have been physically altered? Less wear and tear on the camera is good! 

Also, I was watching a tutorial on luminance hdr and in his version the software had a bunch of variation of an hdr which could be modified. My version doesn't seem to have that. Is there a setting?

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 9:58 PM, Brian Cluff <brian@snaptek.com> wrote:
Use LuminanceHDR for exposure blending.  GIMP is waaaaaay too much work to get just one way to blending the images.  Luminance on the other hard offers a tons of different methods and then you can tweak the settings within each method.  It's all very easy and gives you much better results.

Brian Cluff

On 01/07/2016 05:51 PM, Michael Havens wrote:
thank you so much man. I really appreciate it. I certaainly will devote
10% of my available   brain to these videos tomorrow. Do you know of any
videos or text teaching how to do exposure blending with gimp2.8? all
the tuts  I've been finding are incomplete or are how to do it with 2.2!

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 7:37 PM, Brian Cluff <brian@snaptek.com
<mailto:brian@snaptek.com>> wrote:

    There's a ton of ways to do what you want.  The biggest thing you
    will have to worry about is lighting.  For instance, if you are
    putting something that was lit from the left into a scene that was
    lit from the right, then there is little you can do. No matter how
    carefully you add it to your scene your brain will always tell you
    there is something wrong with the picture.

    I tend to use a couple of different techniques to put one image into
    another.
    If the background is a relatively solid color, I'll use a technique
    similar to this example for cutting out images while preserving fine
    details (hair in this example)... hint, you don't use ANY of the
    selection tools, or copy and past.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnbxtMCHKV0
    or
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jle81ofRLok
    or
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quAChCnK_Dk

    The other way I like combine image is brushing out the background
    using layer masks as demonstrated in this video with the leg:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHJAJziWDs0

    I usually use a combination of the 2 techniques since you rarely get
    perfect results with either method.

    All these methods ultimately use layer masks, which is a much better
    way to combine photos than cutting and pasting since you can tweak
    what is transparent or not back and both without having to commit to
    a certain part of an image like you do with cutting and pasting.

    Brian Cluff


    On 01/07/2016 02:58 PM, Michael Havens wrote:
    I found a way to super impose an image but it looks tacky.
    The method I learned was to open both files and then to select the
    image you want to put on the other with fuzzytool. I found that
    didn't work so I used the path tool. Well I cut the image out but
    the paste doesn't look good. It is out of scale. For the purposes
    I need WHat ithe best way to cut a house out and put it on a blue sky?

    --
    :-)~MIKE~(-:


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