I don't want to sould like a dick but those photos are horrible. The reason they are so grainy is because they were not shot at the highest quality setting, or the program that was being used to process the images was not used properly. If your buddy has a Nikon I can post up for him the exact settings he should use to get some
great shots of your car for you. When shooting HDR's with an SLR, there are a
lot of things you have to look out for to make sure you get quality shots. Normally, when you bracket images for an HDR, you want to pre-focus the camera, and then set it to manual focus. If this is not done, and the camera is left to autofocus, the camera will slightly re-focus and all of your shots will be at different focus points. Not good for HDR's. This is why your images came out blurry. Then you also have to take into account metering. If the camera is allowed to meter the exposure for every shot taken, each shot will have a slightly different exposure. Also not good for HDR's. In post processing, especially if shot in RAW, nothing can be done to the photo before processing it in an HDR program such as Photomatix Pro, which is probably the best out there for HDR processing. Don't use just the plug-in for Photoshop, as this does not work nowhere near as well as the stand-alone program. Once you are done, the photos can have a clean look, as if they were not composed as an HDR, or the can have a very artistic look, such as the effect your friend was attempting. I will attach a couple recent HDR's I shot to give you an idea. Again, please don't take offence, I am really trying to help. I'm sure you would love to have some nice shots of that beautiful MS3. I can't wait till the weather here in Chicago lets me get a clean car out to get some!
This was composed from a 7 shot bracket and processed in Photomatix and finished in CS3. Meant to have a more "artistic" look.
This was a single shot HDR, processed in Photomatix then finished in CS3. Meant to have a cleaner, "non-HDR" look.
