This is a test jump into HDR photography. Hopefully it develops as I learn more, but it was so interesting I just took a leap at it.

Faux HDR

First off, I cheated at this. I took 1 picture (which wasn't really a great picture to begin with) and manually manipulated the colors to over & under expose. For the first test I wanted to see the merge results.

Underexposed

Original

Overexposed

The results were rich in color. I shifted between 2 exposure spaces and the latter of the two was the richest.
Having seen the combined difference, I'll work on learning on the Powershot S3 how to manipulate the over/under exposure and see what a true light picture results with.

Combined - 2 Stops

Combined - 4 Stops

Real Test 1: Flower Pot

Flower pot on Porch. I took this a few hours after the faux test. Much better
Pictures one and two are cropped sections of the flower pot. Note the detail in the HDR version.
Picture three is the full HDR picture
Picture four is a combination of all of the exposures (marked) and a grayscale strip to show the differences.

Original - Cropped

HDR Cropped

HDR Full

Exposure Ranges

21 pictures ranging in exposures
Noted that there is a need to drop overly exposed pictures (95% white) from the batch

Original

HDR

HDR

HDR Shop - V1 is free for non-commercial
Photomatix - The older version is free (no tone tools)
- The latest version will save a non-watermarked HDR file.
- Combined with HDR Shop you apparently have all the tools you need.
Photoshop C2 or higher