HDR Sunset

I was out playing with my new camera again at sunset tonight.  Here are a couple HDR combines (using auto exposure bracketing in the camera and a sequence of 5 shots and Luminance HDR on my Linux box for the combine)  of the desert landscape looking west into the sunset.  It's amazing how different the combines can be.

 I liked this shot because it has a lot of color saturation.  Most of the foreground detail are only visible in the longest exposure so I was very pleased at how it appears here.  With the bright sun, the shortest exposures that show the halo of sunlight show very little else.  This view is not too far from what my eye saw while composing the shot - the human eye and brain is excellent at being able to see this type of scene.  The shortest exposure was 1/8000 seconds at f/8, ISO 100 using my 24mm f/1.8 lens on my 70D.  The mid exposure was 1/2000 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.  The longest exposure was 1/250 seconds at f/8, ISO 200.  The HDR combine was a fattal operator.

This HDR combine is a Mantiuk '06 combine of the same 5 images as the previous image.  The low saturation almost gives the appearance of there being snow on the ground.