Having got ND grad filters for Christmas, I quickly tested these out just after New Year. The pictures were taken quickly as it mostly rained all the time. As grad filters I used a soft ND8 plus a soft ND4 from Cokin. The ND grad filter pictures was mostly Ok, but I struggled a bit to get the exposure correct.
To compare against HDR, I also took a couple of bracketed pictures (-1, 0 +1 and -2, 0- +2) and processed them using HDR Efex Pro 2. But even if I tried to use subtle settings, the colors always look very HDR like. See if you can spot which is which.
I have now uploaded my first pictures and trying out zenfolio