Looking from bedroom, through bathroom, into walk-in closet. Bedroom & bathroom in natural late afternoon light (facing ENE away from the sun). Closet is dark. Objective of the test/demo was to see how well the closet could be exposed. For the best possible single exposure image, see image "A" at http://www.pbase.com/ed_k/hdr_experiments in the 4-shot comparison image. The 6 exposures that went into creating this HDR PAD are also at that same link.
To me, this image looks natural and realistic (actually the closet was darker and the contents less visible to the naked eye so maybe "natural" isn't quite correct, but it does look realistic). "Natural & realistic" HDR images are a challenge (and maybe an oxymoron). How long do you guess it will be before in-camera HDR is available??
This image was created using 6 tif files (which in turn were created in Capture NX2 from 6 D300 RAW files shots with Active D-lighting off). I used Photomatix to create a preliminary .hdr file (which in turn must be "tonemapped"). Just for fun (to see if it would work) I imported the .hdr file into a different HDR program (to test whether .hdr format is truly "standard" - it was). The tonemapping was actually performed in the 2nd program (Essential HDR) so strictly speaking what you see is an Essential HDR image, not Photomatix. Later I'll have to let Essential HDR generate the .hdr file and follow with the tonemap to see if the two are the same (I doubt it).