It seems to me that the newer cameras capture more detail than what I can get from my canon sd1100 going the route of mergeing exposures. I dont think it will be long before the traditional way of creating hdr images is a thing of the past.  I know some of the new cameras output straight to hdr now.  Can you change the exposure setting when going straight to hdr? If so then what do you get from mergeing different exposures of a hdr photo? Hybrid hdr?

Anyway I'm just curious as to what others think on this subject.

I think its true that newer camers capture clearer photo's, I just upgraded from an Olympus 410 to the 510 and can notice a difference, It does have image stabilization. And now I hear there is a 610 out, They are moving fast!

As far as HDR...  My understanding is its the differences or stops between light parts and the dark parts of a photo. In the old days I used layers in Photoshop to overlay images using soft light or vivid light ect...  I would think that  any camera that allows manual over or underexposure of a photo can be used to create HDR images.

Visually I love the HDR look and I have experimented with several different ways of doing it. I would think once you have an HDR photo... its HDR, or merging two HDR photos will produce yet another HDR photo.

I also think its inportant to say that (for me anyway) it shouldnt be over done. The photo should look real or at least somewhat real. For example above is one of my HDR's

Just my thoughts :)

Well even manually adjusting exposure you can still have areas in a photo that are either too dark or too light. Skys for instance are common for being overexposed. The newer cameras seem to be able to give you details in the lightest and darkest areas at the same time without the need for all the exposures. The way I do hdr images is a sequence of five exposures ranging from -2 to +2. The rest is done with hdrshop and the tonemap plugin. After that the hdr goes into photoshop for final editing. I agree on the part of hdr not being overdone.  Here is one of mine that you might not think to be a hdr.

5 exposures, wow...  I think your a little futher along then I.  I use two 1 over 1 under, I seem to like it to be a little more under tho or just a little dark depending on the image. I may have to give 5 a try. Your image does have a LOT of texture, like I could reach down and pick up a leaf.

I just found this link to a new camera that does hdr automatically. I noticed that it says the dynamic range is not as high as it would be if the image had been done manually from several exposures. Some good info on hdr photography there as well.
http://apcmag.com/pentax_adds_hdr_capabilities_to_their_latest_dslrs.htm

And that was posted in jan of 2008 so I guess I'm way behind as far as whats out there regarding cameras. Partly because I can't bring myself to spend that much on a camera yet when its still just a hobby.

the way I see it, these new cameras which tonemap and blend the images together in-camera are likely to be good for timesaving, but still won't offer the degree of control you can get by doing it yourself... it's effectively a bastardised evolution of the jpeg vs RAW argument - do you want the camera to do a few things to make it "look good" as soon as you upload to the computer (losing some of the image information along the way), or do you want all the detail you were able to capture, to do with at your own leisure and as you please..?

personally I'm pretty sick of seeing overdone hdr work, especially when it comes to the haloing often created by tonemapping, and the colour casts it sometimes introduces... in terms of getting a realistic, high quality image with an equivalent dynamic range to a tonemapped hdr image, I can't see that anything can be better than manually blending the exposures yourself in photoshop using layer masks and exercising a good degree of patience... for those images that are worth it, well... it's worth it!

I see hdr as doing kind of the same thing as a jpeg - make an image look good quickly and chuck away the rest of the irrelevant exposure information.... you'd still need to set up on a tripod if the exposures are to be accurately merged and blended anyway, so why having gone to that effort would you not want to have full control over the output? maybe it's just me but then I ALWAYS shoot in raw, and take great care with my conversions and processing... I can understand others might differ in this view.... bottom line, hdr and its incorporation into newest cameras = convenience, and also partly marketing hype ;) just my 2p

For in camera HDR I think Fuji are working along the right lines with their EXR sensors.

These take two images at the same time overexposing half the pixels and under exposing the other half and then combining the two images in camera.
From the reviews I've seen it seems to work well and has the advantage that it works with moving subjects as both images are created at the same time.

The downside is that it halves the pixel count of the final image, is only available as JPEG output  and at the moment  is only available on a few smaller sensor cameras. 

An 18+ megapixel DSLR outputting 9+ megapixel HDR images would be an interesting proposition using this sort of sensor imo.