Hey guys, this is my first post in the C&C section. After browsing through pages and pages of images the comments offered are invaluable. I only just started shooting in the beginning of the summer - I loved every minute of it and feel I have learned a great deal.
This was taken at sunrise in Ocean City, NJ. PP is minor but I think I can get a little bit more from the sky. Any critique, good or bad is welcomed. Please feel free to make any adjustments.
The light was increasing quite quickly and I don't have any ND filters, yet, so I had to use the following exposure settings:
Exposure: (1/6)
Aperture: f/22.0
Focal Length: 24 mm
ISO Speed: 50
Please excuse the flickr hosting, that's all I have at the moment. If there is a wayto offer a higher quality and higher resolution for you to play with please let me know.
Ektar25 - I like your edit; however, I'm still undecided how much detail I want in the rock in the lower left of the frame. There is none in the pier and that rock seems out of place looking at it now. Can you detail your edits just a bit? I'm slowly learning CS5.
RustyBug - I like your changes as well; however, that morning the sky was that orange (at least after the sun was above the horizon) - there really weren't very many pinks/reds. Before the sun came up - it was a magnificent pink/purple as seen below.
Will, I used Lightroom to make some minor adjustments. A graduated filter to darken the sky, boosted the clarity and sharpness to get a little more detail and a slight adjustment to the color. People usually complain about the horizon line dividing an image in half, but I think the opposing angles of the pier and the bright part of the sky in your photo void that argument here.
I tried removing the halos, darkening the pilings where there was flare, toning down the sun fare, and shifting toward the pink/purple hues in your later post.
On second thought - were they on the lens, the 24-70 for that shot? The 135mm shot is clean as far as I can tell and if they were there would be more evident.
Thanks again for the feedback everyone! I appreciate it.
Too sharp to be lens cleanliness issue. Have to be sensor dust. High resolution sensors show even the finest dust you probably can't see on the sensor without a fair amount of magnification. No matter how well I clean my sensor, there's always something. That's why I always spot retouch for large prints and almost always for work I post. OTOH, I have a 4/3rds camera that shakes the sensor to dislodge dust and I have few dust problems with its images. Nevertheless, it's wise to check.
A little trick for finding dust bunnies: Open a curves adjustment layer. Change blend mode to luminosity. Pull the shadow and highlight endpoints way in to steepen the curve and increase contrast.
Below the curves layer, open a blank layer and heal or clone the bunnies out (using "current and below" so the curves layer doesn't affect the cloning).
Well thank you all for the comments, and tips!! I'm a little disappointed that my sensor is that dusty already but it appears "normal" and is only evident when stopped down to the degree I was in these pictures. It's not evident at larger apertures; however, when do you judge that you need a cleaning? I like to think I'm overly anal about my gear but I guess it just happens.
Anyway here are some final adjustments I made. I liked keeping the rocks darker as it seemed abnormal that they had lighting being they were back-lit to the same degree the pier was. I like the warmer edits with a little more contrast. I made some slight color balance adjustments in CS5 after getting the overall look I wanted in LR3. The split toning doesn't seem to give the same effect. As we all know photography is subjective and this picture makes *me* say wow.
eskimochaos wrote:
however, when do you judge that you need a cleaning?
My answer is, If you can see bunnies on your images, it's time to clean.
How to do that? Well, that's a touchy question. Many people go at cleaning a sensor as if they were performing open-heart surgery. They buy all sorts of expensive stuff designed for this exceedingly delicate and sensitive task.
My method will give those folks the vapors. I first brush and blow off the loose dust with a small rubber blower (also has a brush attachment). Then I breathe on the sensor to fog it up, and wipe it clean with a Q-tip. That method has never damaged a sensor and never failed to clear off the bunnies.
AuntiPode wrote:
I bother with significant dust, but minor dust I ignore and fix with PP. Your call.
Or, you can stand near bagpipes and let the vibrations loosen the dust until it falls off. Oh, wait. They don't let you play bagpipes in New Zealand!
I like the 2:1 aspect ratio and when you shoot f/22, your image will show every dust spot that you’re going to have…maybe go with with an f/11 or so. You’ll get a faster shutter speed I would think around 1/250th, but that would be good for that shot. You’re not trying to get motion blurr there
