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Photo of the day: August 2012
- Thread starter oblomow
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Thanks for the reply! I imagine you also increased the clarity to get those well defined clouds and black edges.
F/22 will get you more DOF, but will make you run into diffraction, which will reduce sharpness. I have the same issue with my macros; F/10 is my camera's sweet spot (it depends on sensor size and pixel density), although I can get decent results with smaller apertures. Once I go over F/14, I run into hideous (ie. unusable) pictures, albeit with a lot of DOF. It's important to mention that the sharpness reduction is gradual; you won't get tack-sharp shots at f/11 and horrible fuzz at f/13. Personally, F/13 is my personal limit for DOF/sharpness balance.
Here's a comparison I made for a macrophotography course explaining that exact problem: Diffraction. The pictures shown are 100% crops of the original images, shot with a 100mm macro lens, external flash and the same settings (save the different apertures): ISO 200, 1/200, manual focus.*
*Note: Photobucket allows for a maximum of 1024px on the longest side, so the comparison shot shows approximately 80% crops. You can still see the effect, though.
Despite these shortcomings, one can get decent results with small apertures, like today's shot (see below).
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This is a very collaborative garden crab spider (Mecaphesa sp.) shot after today's rainy morning.
Canon XTi, 100mm macro+68mm extension tubes, external flash+custom diffuser+ambient light
0.4s, F/13, ISO 100, manual focus, cropped to 2212x1477px and resized
WOW!
Daniel, your macro stuff is very inspiring. I wasn't sure it could be done with an entry level Canon, but you have proven otherwise, and many times since I joined just over a month ago. This is a photographic area of particular interest for me. Oh well, better start saving my buck$ for some good macro glass and flash set ups...
Many thanks to those of you who took the time to comment on my last photo. I'm not able to be as interactive as I'd like in my replies here right now...hoping to have more time soon! I am reading the thread, though...lots of very nice photos popping up here lately!
I am in awe of your visual memory--whatever it took for you to remember this painting, which does indeed bear a remarkable resemblance to the location of my last photo. You've really piqued my interest in these painters of the Lake District. My knowledge of English landscape painters is limited to the usual suspects (Turner, Constable, etc.); so if you know of a book that focuses on these artists who were inspired by the Dolomites, I'd love to hear about it.
Awww .....thank you! That's a very broad question, and it really got me thinking. I would love to know what my average investment of time per photo might be, all told. The best I can do is summarize it like this:
1) Research. At least an hour for any new location. I'll first 'visit' it with Google Earth, 'flying' around the area to get a sense for how the location's features are situated and which time of year it is most likely to be photogenic. I'll try to sort out which parts of the topography might affect the path of the sun's light, etc. Then I'll check all of that against the info I can get from TPE to see how best to time a particular shot. Finally, once I have a sense for what I'd like to do and when I'd like to do it, I research the logistics: how to get there, where to sleep (if necessary), etc.
2) Travel and hiking. I do a lot of 'recon missions', so there is usually a lot more driving and hiking involved than is necessary to get the actual shots. I usually don't drive more than about four hours away for photography, but I have had to embark on multi-day drives and have had to jump on planes on occasion. (I should add, however, that I split my time between two continents, so "four hours away" is relative to wherever I am currently living.) If hiking is involved, I usually plan for two days of hiking per shot so that I can spend plenty of time getting the feel for a location before committing to a composition there.
Since I tend to visit locations multiple times, plugging away at them in the hopes of getting the right ephemera for the shot, the total amount of travel and hiking time for any given shot can really add up sometimes. If I didn't enjoy traveling and hiking so much, it would be downright insane for me to spend so much time getting these lanscape photos.
3) Setting up. This one is easy. I like to be in position at least 15 minutes before I think the light will start getting good. By this point in the process, I've long since figured out what I want and how to compose it, so I just need to fine tune the composition, attach whatever filters I might need, plug in the shutter release cable, and cross my fingers for good light and atmosphere.
4) Waiting/Shooting. Once I commit to a composition (a long process, see above), I'm like a pit bull. I may be eccentric in this regard, but I dig my teeth into a shot and don't let go until I've got what I want or until the ephemera have robbed me of the opportunity--in which case I go back another day and try again. Once I've got the composition dialed in, that's it: I'll ride the light all the way to the end, shooting exactly the same composition for an hour or more, if necessary. It's a rare and wonderful exception when the immediate vicinity has lots to offer, and the light and atmosphere are presenting one great opportunity after another. Then I might be running around composing on the fly, getting numerous keepers because nature is making it all so easy.
5) Processing. It could be five minutes or five weeks. Photos with really tricky tonality might require a lot of work to make me happy. I like to gild the lily a bit with my photos, always trying to see how far I can push them before the processing starts to get in the way. I sometimes spend weeks processing a single photo, getting completely absorbed in the nuances of it. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself looking at the screen while making some subtle change and thinking..."ah yes, that's much better," only to discover that I wasn't actually tugging on a slider (or whatever) and hadn't changed anything! That's when I know I need to step away from that one and come back with fresh eyes. I usually go through several processing versions before deciding that I'm "done," and I usually don't share the photos until I've had some time to sit on them for a while.
OK, writing all of that was a nice diversion from work...now time to retreat back into my hermit cave for a while, alas...
I am reading the thread, though...lots of very nice photos popping up here lately!Artists painted the Lakeland hills as though they were the Alps or Dolomites...
I am in awe of your visual memory--whatever it took for you to remember this painting, which does indeed bear a remarkable resemblance to the location of my last photo. You've really piqued my interest in these painters of the Lake District. My knowledge of English landscape painters is limited to the usual suspects (Turner, Constable, etc.); so if you know of a book that focuses on these artists who were inspired by the Dolomites, I'd love to hear about it.
Awww .....thank you! That's a very broad question, and it really got me thinking. I would love to know what my average investment of time per photo might be, all told. The best I can do is summarize it like this:
1) Research. At least an hour for any new location. I'll first 'visit' it with Google Earth, 'flying' around the area to get a sense for how the location's features are situated and which time of year it is most likely to be photogenic. I'll try to sort out which parts of the topography might affect the path of the sun's light, etc. Then I'll check all of that against the info I can get from TPE to see how best to time a particular shot. Finally, once I have a sense for what I'd like to do and when I'd like to do it, I research the logistics: how to get there, where to sleep (if necessary), etc.
2) Travel and hiking. I do a lot of 'recon missions', so there is usually a lot more driving and hiking involved than is necessary to get the actual shots. I usually don't drive more than about four hours away for photography, but I have had to embark on multi-day drives and have had to jump on planes on occasion. (I should add, however, that I split my time between two continents, so "four hours away" is relative to wherever I am currently living.) If hiking is involved, I usually plan for two days of hiking per shot so that I can spend plenty of time getting the feel for a location before committing to a composition there.
Since I tend to visit locations multiple times, plugging away at them in the hopes of getting the right ephemera for the shot, the total amount of travel and hiking time for any given shot can really add up sometimes. If I didn't enjoy traveling and hiking so much, it would be downright insane for me to spend so much time getting these lanscape photos.
3) Setting up. This one is easy. I like to be in position at least 15 minutes before I think the light will start getting good. By this point in the process, I've long since figured out what I want and how to compose it, so I just need to fine tune the composition, attach whatever filters I might need, plug in the shutter release cable, and cross my fingers for good light and atmosphere.
4) Waiting/Shooting. Once I commit to a composition (a long process, see above), I'm like a pit bull. I may be eccentric in this regard, but I dig my teeth into a shot and don't let go until I've got what I want or until the ephemera have robbed me of the opportunity--in which case I go back another day and try again. Once I've got the composition dialed in, that's it: I'll ride the light all the way to the end, shooting exactly the same composition for an hour or more, if necessary. It's a rare and wonderful exception when the immediate vicinity has lots to offer, and the light and atmosphere are presenting one great opportunity after another. Then I might be running around composing on the fly, getting numerous keepers because nature is making it all so easy.
5) Processing. It could be five minutes or five weeks. Photos with really tricky tonality might require a lot of work to make me happy. I like to gild the lily a bit with my photos, always trying to see how far I can push them before the processing starts to get in the way. I sometimes spend weeks processing a single photo, getting completely absorbed in the nuances of it. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself looking at the screen while making some subtle change and thinking..."ah yes, that's much better," only to discover that I wasn't actually tugging on a slider (or whatever) and hadn't changed anything! That's when I know I need to step away from that one and come back with fresh eyes.
I usually go through several processing versions before deciding that I'm "done," and I usually don't share the photos until I've had some time to sit on them for a while.OK, writing all of that was a nice diversion from work...now time to retreat back into my hermit cave for a while, alas...
Local artists found a market for paintings, etchings and aquatints of Lakeland scenes, aimed at well-heeled travellers who, if it wasnt for war in Europe, would be exploring the Alps and the Dolomites rather than the English Lake District. What the artists copied wasnt the European landscapes themselves, but the painters of those landscapes, the best-known being Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa. The results look pretty ludicrous to modern eyes: Lakeland hills heightened to give them an Alpine grandeur, waterfalls becoming huge cateracts, gondolas gliding across the lakes, etc. Nevertheless, these were the images that illustrated the first guidebooks to the Lake District, published from the 1750s onwards.
A typical example:
I've been keeping an eye on these threads for a while now and figured I'd join in.
Here's my first picture.
Welcome and a nice starter, keep them coming.
Although I dislike most of the times HDR pics, this doesn't mean it has no application or can be helpful at times. To practice, I took this church interior as a subject for a HDR exercise. After several try outs, I choose a 9 image HDR composite, steps of 0.3 EV, processed with NIK HDR Efex Pro 2.0 and fine-tuned with Aperture and other plugins, but no perspective correction.
Laurenskerk, Rotterdam.
Wow, great job!
I don't really like HDR most of the times but when done well it can give pretty astonishing results.
Another photo from the north, near the discovery site for the modern 'gold rush' in the Yukon, taken from a helicopter. Unfortunately a lot of the photos I took from the helicopter that day had some glare from the window, and I'm not good enough with post-processing to get rid of it.
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Heli view 2 by Melissa.O.Anderson, on Flickr
Heli view 2 by Melissa.O.Anderson, on Flickr
Another photo from the north, near the discovery site for the modern 'gold rush' in the Yukon, taken from a helicopter. Unfortunately a lot of the photos I took from the helicopter that day had some glare from the window, and I'm not good enough with post-processing to get rid of it.
Heli view 2 by Melissa.O.Anderson, on Flickr
Nice view and light, Melizard
Off topic. Anyone having any trouble with the Auto TMG? Using latest version of FireFox and it doesn't seem to be working. The Reef, help.
Oooopsie. Disregard, I figured it out. Using a different theme on FF that is dark and the tmg button was hiding.
Oooopsie. Disregard, I figured it out. Using a different theme on FF that is dark and the tmg button was hiding.
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Since I haven't posted much this summer, I have a backlog of photos I want to share. C&C appreciated. My biggest complaint about my photos is the sharpness, everything is handheld since I can't take a tripod with me (already have way too much gear, and yet to splurge on a fancy lightweight carbon fiber tripod). I'm shooting everything with a 18-200 lens, which is very convenient, but I've been considering getting a quality wide angle lens since I seem to shoot landscapes more than anything.
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Yukon by Melissa.O.Anderson, on Flickr
Yukon by Melissa.O.Anderson, on Flickr