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Archive 2014 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

e6filmuser
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

This male was difficult to approach until it settled, hanging from the edge of a leaf. It was then quite tolerant of me shuffling around on my knees, taking a series of images. This was the best one.

EM-1, Kiron x1.5 TC, ca 180mm of extension rings, Printing Nikkor 105mm at f11 1/250 sec, ISO 400, twin TTL flash, hand-held.

Image cropped by ca 60%.

Harold

May 18, 2014 at 01:45 PM

coder
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

Bottom quarter of the image has something going on - like mass cloning gone awry.

May 18, 2014 at 02:18 PM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

coder wrote:
Bottom quarter of the image has something going on - like mass cloning gone awry.

That is the edge of the leaf. No cloning was done anywhere on this image. It also looks like a cellular cross-section in the RAW image. A wierd effect.

Harold

May 18, 2014 at 03:15 PM

coder
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

OK.

I don't know what software you are using but it really messed things up here IMHO. Not sure why you can't see it.

May 18, 2014 at 03:18 PM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

coder wrote:
OK.

I don't know what software you are using but it really messed things up here IMHO. Not sure why you can't see it.

The point is that I like the result.

Harold

May 18, 2014 at 03:45 PM

Statitica
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

The shot itself is sound, but the processing, especially what appears to be a texture overlay, doesn't do much for me at all, personally.

May 19, 2014 at 07:53 AM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

Statitica wrote:
The shot itself is sound, but the processing, especially what appears to be a texture overlay, doesn't do much for me at all, personally.

What is texture overlay? I can't comment on something I don't understand

Harold

May 19, 2014 at 08:55 AM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

Thanks for all your comments. You persuaded me. I no longer like the original image as much as I thought I did and have completely reworked it.

Harold

May 19, 2014 at 09:56 AM

coder
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

e6filmuser wrote:
What is texture overlay? I can't comment on something I don't understand

Harold

It's there. Less so in the 2nd image you posted below, but still there. At first I thought it was a combination of noise reduction and over sharpening or motion blur. Some parts remind me of a bad sensor cleaning job.

If you look in in the upper right corner of the first image and in the eyes of the damsel you can really see it, almost a painted effect.

What software are you using? What is your workflow?

It'd be interesting if you posted the image SOOC for comparison.

May 19, 2014 at 10:47 AM

mike717
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

Looks like you ran it through Topaz Clean. You can get some neat effects but it's best if used more discretely IMHO.

Mike

May 19, 2014 at 11:04 AM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

coder wrote:
What software are you using? What is your workflow?

I shoot in Olympus RAW, large ORF files. PS 7 doesn't see them so I convert to EXIF TIFF (same size) in Olympus Master 2 or Viewer 3. (Olympus should know how to handle their own files). The TIFF stage is for resizing and processing with minimal compression effects.

I apply Auto Contrast in PS and see if I also like what Auto Levels does, often not. I may then tweak brightness and contrast slightly in Image Adjustments. If I'm going to crop I then do it and I resize (1000 pixels wide) for processing.

Using Topaz plugins, I then always check for noise in Denoise 5. Then I take a look at what Clairity has to offer, maybe Macro, maybe Insect Wings, occasionally Fur and Feather! Then or later I may see if Clean helps *, usually not. I always open Detail 3,as I use such small effective apertures, usually opting for minimal Fine Overall Detail, occasionally Micro Contrast. I use its fill flash simulation quite a lot when I have used single flash. I then run NR again and tend to need none or minimal. Last is In Focus before saving the 1000 pixel wide TIFF file.

I batch process groups of images with similar requirements. (I may be using flash exclusively at the moment but most of my images are shot in daylight. Also, only very few were using the EM-1, most with the E-P2).

* I have only saved its contribution two or three times.

The TIFF is converted in the Olympus software to a same size (1000 pixels) high quality EXIF JPEG file for posting.

Who knows? That may even help someone!

I have to go now. Domestic duties call.

Harold

May 19, 2014 at 11:42 AM

coder
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

Thanks.

I'd have to guess the cropping (you said by 60%) and your work flow starting with the Topaz stuff is just too much, leading to the artifacts in the images posted. The images are overcooked, and from your comments it doesn't seem that you intend to have the "texture" be there.

Resizing is one of the last things I do...I think that should be near the end of your workflow to give the other things more data to work with, IMO.

May 19, 2014 at 12:12 PM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

coder wrote:
Resizing is one of the last things I do...I think that should be near the end of your workflow to give the other things more data to work with, IMO.

As a general practice, that would be utterly impractical. Even for NR, the time taken is unacceptable on large files. Topaz plugings can take even longer. Any operation would take 17.6 times as long. Something I am not going to contemplate.

It is an option to consider for more severe crops but the pre-crop resizing to 1000 pixels for the whole image is necessary for sheer time considerations. Most crops are just for composition and maybe 10- 20%.

Harold

May 20, 2014 at 02:39 AM

coder
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

e6filmuser wrote:
As a general practice, that would be utterly impractical. Even for NR, the time taken is unacceptable on large files. Topaz plugings can take even longer. Any operation would take 17.6 times as long. Something I am not going to contemplate.

Harold

Modern hardware and well written software has no problem doing the kind of processing photographers do. Unless you are doing something like really large multi image panos you should hardly be waiting often.

I work with full size tiff files exported from Lightroom on an 5 year old quad core windows 7 machine and speed has never once bothered me. Even my dual core 2010 mac book pro does just fine in most cases. My 2013 macbook is blazingly fast, but my 5 year old windows 7 machine is still pretty great, so even "old" (tech wise) machines can still do the job.

If your processing is really that slow you either need to upgrade your computer and max out the ram, get a faster hard drive in it, or upgrade the CPU. Or upgrade the thing altogether.

May 20, 2014 at 04:43 AM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

coder wrote:
If your processing is really that slow you either need to upgrade your computer and max out the ram, get a faster hard drive in it, or upgrade the CPU. Or upgrade the thing altogether.

Thanks.

You are probably right. My son has something like yours, which he says he will give me when he updates his. (I doubt I will have to wait long). I was investigating new ones before he made that offer. Having just bought the EM1, a new PC right now would not go down well domestically!

Anyway, I don't thing it worth doing anything to upgrade this one. I am also going to replace my moniitor, all the more so as it gave some very worrying symptoms a couple of days ago.

Harold

May 20, 2014 at 05:25 AM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

coder wrote:
Some parts remind me of a bad sensor cleaning job.

I have noted your phrasing. Just to make it clear for everyone, it is a new camera with a new sensor and used with special care after sensor dirt problems with the previous one.

Harold

May 20, 2014 at 10:19 AM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

I'm not sure if this question has been asked, as such anyway. Last year I checked on the results of :

a) Processing a whole image (1000 pixels wide) and then taking a crop from the processed image

b) Cropping the image, resizing the crop to up to 1000 pixels, usually less, and then processing the crop.

This would usually be for posting the whole image with the crop alongside for additional information.

I found that b gave more detail.

What I am unsure of, as it was a period of transition, is whether it was a JPEG image of a TIFF. It is more likely to have been the former.

[Edit] I have checked and no TIFF version is extant of the image with which I found this effect.[Edit ends]

Harold

May 20, 2014 at 10:29 AM

e6filmuser
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

We have been asked to be creative with our images posted here:

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1239053

In that context, which of the two images (reposted here) best fulfils the brief?

Harold

May 20, 2014 at 11:27 AM

Goldenorfe
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

Neither Harold.

"art" can be a beautiful composition or a subject with its natural surroundings part of the image. bad image quality will always be that unfortunatly

i still cant work out why this damsel image looks wrong, lighting/heavy cropping/too much post work, using auto settings in ps never really works as it takes the whole image appearance instead of just the subject, also using any filters deteriorates image quality , also only ever use very light noise reduction once , and use High pass selective sharpening after final re sizing for web.

Phil

May 20, 2014 at 02:14 PM

artgrl
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Face of Blue Damselfly Printing Nikkor 105mm

My first reaction was also that this otherwise interesting image had heavy use of filters.

May 21, 2014 at 12:24 AM

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