Oh, yes please! 
There are many occasions when I attempt to change the contrast in areas of an image with a curve, like a cloudy sky but in darker areas too. TT CM would not only make it easier but would, I think, do things that are impossible with a curve.
Terry

I have to respectfully disagree!!  No it is not always necessary, I agree here.  "Adjusting" your first image got your foreground at the expense of the clouds.  Two images (minimum) at 2-3 EV spread might have captured both.  Photomatrix or CS5 or Picturenaut would give you all.  Running gamma on the mid and shadows had to leave noise and a lesser rendition of all the greens in that landscape--they are compressed already.  Denoising is still "de-sharpening" to some degree. And, you lost the sky to get the foreground(?!?!)

.
   Oh, no. Not the point-and-shoot.  Their sensors cannot capture what the larger sensor can.   That's another story.   

And, how can you say sensor range is irrelevant?  That is like comparing the latitude of chrome film to the latitude of color neg.  It is a matter of physics.

Surely you can see how that too is irrelevant!  The clouds only changed due to the curve I applied.  Obviously the full range of the clouds is there and the foreground too because they came from the same shot.  You could do the same thing with no change whatsoever to the clouds with just a different tone curve.  The two images are proof that the full detail exists for both clouds and foreground.


It is relevant only to the magnitude of the HDR but not relevant to whether or not you can do HDR at all on a single raw.  What I meant was that sensor range is not relevant in our discussion because ALL sensors have an EV range that far exceeds that capable of being reproduced on a monitor or printer.  Therefore HDR is possible regardless of the sensor.  Even cheap cameras that offer raw have at least twice the dynamic range of a monitor/printer.

Mike

Hmmmm.  Now keep in mind I am at a disadvantage since my second image is Mike's already "worked" JPEG.  (Each took only 3-4 minutes).  BTW- These are worked in Adobe RGB so look a little less in sRGB here.
Your original worked:

PS CS5 on just this using ACR Recovery and some Sat.  The cloud info is still there:

PS CS5 HDR Pro using your two JPGs:

Photomatix HDR.  Yes, looks surreal, but would be better with two RAW files:

Photomatix Fusion setting.  Your two JPEGs.  Looks natural, saves both areas.


As I said, if I took the 10 minutes, they would be better.  Of course, a polarizer might have solved much of this from the get-go. 

YMMV. 

These are the only two I looked at but, EXACTLY what I said/did.  Use multiple variants of the same RAW!  (In the above case I had to use your JPEGs.)  My point exactly.  I have been doing that for years.

It is what I was explaining to folks.  However, that is NOT was proposed.  Thanks for backing me up.

 
I see your point Mike and even with my new Studio upgrade I can appreciate what can be done with a RAW file.  However, although you can do something HDRish with a single image there remain scenes with a dynamic range that exceeds the sensor range (which let's face it is only 8 or 9 stops at most. Unless you're disgustingly wealthy and own a medium format digital back).  The whole point of HDR is that it will take a range of values that are H(igher) than the Dynamic Range of the camera sensor and produce an image with a dynamic range that can be displayed on 'normal' devices (printers/monitors/iPhones etc) and that can only be done with multiple exposures.  Sensor range is relevant for true HDR - otherwise they'd have called it something else. 
That is what it is, regardless of how it is used or abused. A single image HDR is not strictly HDR as the dynamic range of the image is within that of the camera sensor (assuming you've exposed correctly and the dynamic range of the scene is within that of the sensor etc).  Splitting hairs; what you will end up with is an image processed with  the appropriate software for an HDR effect.
What you have produced is something that takes the available range of the sensor (ADR - available dynamic range?) and seems to adjusts very nicely thank you very much for the extremes in that range - not HDR though by definition.  I would agree totally that for the majority of cases you possibly wouldn't 'need' HDR to produce a realistic image, especially with Qimage, but for a lot of images, even those within dynamic range, reality often isn't what you're aiming for.


Paul.

Sorry.  You are right that it is relevant but wrong that true HDR means an image that exceeds the sensor DR.  Look it up in Wiki:

"a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods"

Key words here: "standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods".  I would not call single raw HDR tone mapping a "standard digital imaging technique".  In any case, even IF your definition of a "standard technique" is different than mine, you will not find a requirement anywhere that states that the definition of HDR is that it must exceed the dynamic range of the sensor!  That is simply not true.  HDR is nothing more than dynamic range compression that is done in such a way that it exceeds the dynamic range of the output device (monitor/printer), not the sensor.  Why?  Because HDR is about exceeding limits and as long as you exceed the limits of the weakest link in the chain, you have an HDR photo.  A good photographic print has a DR of maybe 100:1.  Your monitor: maybe twice that.  Your camera sensor: 2 to 4 times the DR of the monitor.  The very reason we need HDR to begin with is due to the limitations of our output devices and the need to display more range than they can.

Now I've never argued that you can do any and all HDR work in a single raw and that multiple raws will never be a benefit.  Quite the contrary.  I gave examples of where the dynamic range may exceed even that of the sensor (raw file).  What I started out saying in this thread is that many times people use multiple raws when in fact a single raw will do as good or better.  I think Jeff's examples are good proof of that.  And yes, it's fairly easy to come up with an example where multiple raws would do better than a single one.  But that doesn't mean you can't get true HDR from a single raw.  You certainly can!

Mike