A good free option mentioned by the community is Luminance HDR. It’s free, open source, and available on multiple operating systems, so it’s a solid starting point if you want to experiment with HDR without buying software.

Another route is to create an HDR-style result by manually blending multiple exposures in an image editor such as GIMP. This takes more time than dedicated HDR software, but it can give you more natural-looking results and more control over the final image.

In short:

• Luminance HDR: best if you want a dedicated free HDR program.
• GIMP/manual blending: best if you want to learn the process and aim for subtler, less “overprocessed” HDR images.

The community answers didn’t provide detailed drawbacks for Luminance HDR specifically, beyond that manual blending is generally slower than using purpose-built HDR software.