Photomatix - Really noisy result?

[Otispunkmeyer]

So I thought I would give the HDR photo a go.

I have used Photomatix in the past but found it awkward. The newer program seems better. However, how do you get anything good from it? I got something I quite liked, scene (shooting into the sun at sunset) looked evenly lit (not radio-active), no halo-ing, no blotchy bits. I was pleased.

But then on closer inspection the image seemed extremely noisy like I'd taken it at ISO6400. The three images I used were RAWs from my NEX and all were ISO 100 and look perfectly noise free in Lightroom individually. So what gives? It was most prominent on the gravel track I had in the frame which seemed to come out with blue and red dots all over it.

I think I got a better result just tweaking levels, contrast, saturation and using some brush work/filter masking in LR!!

Do I need to pre-process the RAW files before I send them through Photomatix? The other problem was vegetation went all fuzzy because it moves in each frame (and I didn't use a tripod! though the NEX can fire off its 3 bracketed shots at 10fps)

[Gemm]

Perhaps your setting is too extreme? Increasing the 'smoothing' settings does reduce the noise.

[K12beano]

With Photomatix you should feed the RAW files in then select the options to reduce ghosting and cut any noise out of the underexposed files.

You can always send the files back into LR and do a little more processing including noise reduction.

I don't find noise at all a problem with Photomatix itself (using D800 RAW up to about 2000 or so...)

[RobDickinson]

Shoot more frames over a wider range and select reduce noise in shadows when blending