Free software that works well to combine differently exposed images is Perfect Layers 2 from OnOne. When it first came out they wanted way too many dollars for it so I deleted it when the trial expired, but it is now free and it works well, providing a user-friendly interface for layers functionality similar to Photoshop.

This is what I could so with it in a quick B&W conversion, it does create some strong edge enhancing along the tower though, but I am sure with some effort that could be solved as well. It does bring out both the church and the sky quite well I think, making for a more dramatic picture (but that is just my preference of course).

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/pimvz/sets/

And here's the result after a few seconds in Aperture using the first photo posted. What I did was:

1- Used Curves to recover the blown highlight area in the clouds behind the steeple.

2- Used the Highlights slider in Highlights and Shadows to put a bit more detail and gradation into the clouds.

3- Used the Shadows slider in Highlights and Shadows to reveal detail in the church building.

It looks a bit rough here because I started out with a scaled down image. Starting with the full 4032 x 3018 pixel file, even in JPG, you'd get a much smoother result and the highlight recovery would go much better with a RAW file to start. You'd then be able to get smoother gradation into the clouds and a better detail recovery in the church.

It's easy to do a fair bit with just a little work in a good processing program. If you think about your other current thread about just wanting the camera to deliver what you saw, the camera will never deliver what you saw here because the dynamic range was too great for the sensor. Come to think of it, it was also too great for your eye to deal with in one capture. What you "see" is heavily post processed by the brain and in cases like this what you "see" includes a HDR like assembly of data for the building "captured" at a "different exposure" (different iris opening) to the data "captured" for the sky because the eye constantly scans the area you're looking at, gathering the best data it can because not all areas of your retina perform the same function. If the eye didn't scan, what you'd see would be colour in the centre and black and white around that just for a start. Some areas would probably be blank because some parts of the retina are sensitive to movement, and there'd be other surprises for you too. You brain needs to post process what your eyes gather in order to present you with "what you see" and it shouldn't be surprising that you also need to do a bit of processing on your photos if you want to get close to "what you saw" as well.

Attached Images

 

These quick conversions of your two posted images were done in Lightroom. B&W with a little color added back in. The highlights remain blown in the bright one but there is better detail in the church - as one would expect.

Done in Oloneo. The alignment has failed - a tripod would fix that.

An HDR using Photomatix default settings.

Did you try the black and white fusion? It solarised the clouds to a kind of interesting effect...

They are all pretty good BUT they don't look natural.
It's good how this has turned into a PP debate whenI originaly asked about getting it right in camera

Thanks for all of your input though, it has been very interesting. Long may it continue.

Let's see who can give the best PP image of this pic

Phil

The answer to that was: you can't.

I know that now and I am thinking of buying an LX5. It's pocketable and shoots raw so I will get as good results with it without the hassle of swapping lenses.