See It All with HDR

What's HDR you ask?  It's High Dynamic Range.
The best digital SLR cameras have a dynamic range of about 9 f/stops.  The human eye has a range of over 20 f/stops!  This is quite a difference, and the reason why your eye can see all that detail in the shadows and still clearly see something very bright in the same scene.  Our eyes actually adjust between the brightest and darkest parts in a scene so fact that we don't even notice that it's happening.  Our eyes combined with the power of our brains to do this is far far better than any camera can hope for.

This is where HDR can help a bit.
The first picture below is a single frame.  The second photo is a combination of five shots merged together using the same f/stop of 8 but at various shutter speeds.  This added about 4 f/stops to the image, and is why you can see more detail in the wood grain without loosing detail in the sky.

center image of 5 shot bracket

combination of 5 images

You can use up to 9 images to create an HDR image with even more dynamic range.
It's amazing what you can do with software nowadays!
The software I used here is HDR Pro by NIK software said to be the best on the market right now.
The only drawback to all this HDR stuff is that you need to know how to bracket (easy) and you need to have a pretty powerful computer because the software is quite power hungry.

This software should be a serious consideration for landscape and architectural photographers because it really does work some magic.
I have not bought HDR Pro yet, I am only testing the free trial version.  Will I buy it?  I'm not sure yet.  It's $159.99 and I specialize in portraits of people not so much landscapes etc.  But it sure would be nice to have!