We finally managed to meet Vincent, who unfortunately had hurt his legs two days ago and was not able to walk very much. So we decided to get all into his car and drive to the Reichstag area, where we would have lots of shooting possibilities within very short walking distance.
In the meantime Ignacio arrived, bringing his nice used Leica M2.
We walked to the Reichstag and took some shots there, passing the modern Paul-Löbbe-Haus on the opposite side.
Canon 5D2 and Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.7 (Contax):
And since the Nex is a wonderful camera to shoot from the hip, I couldn't resist to take a hidden shot of this beautiful asian girl. She seemed to be a bit lost. Again Elmarit 90:
Whilst walking around I got a bit bored of shooting architecture (I do not shoot architecture very often) and kind of liked the idea of strolling a bit more in stealth mode with the Nex-3 and the Elmarit 90, doing people photography, which is a bit more common for me:
A bit later Carsten "forced" me to take a shot of some leaves. Now I am in territory that I should better leave for others, especially for Carsten, the king of leaves
Canon 5D2, ZE 1.4/35 (courtesy of Philippe again):
And finally my version of the MP cages . That was taken with Markus' (Ulff's) Canon TS-E 17mm, a wonderful lens, but very difficult to use for me, as I had never shot a tilt/shift lense before. I had to de-saturate a bit in post and also, I was not able to sharpen without creating moiree that was not in the image before sharpening:
That was it for now, sorry for the lack of artistic value in some images, but I wanted to give you a short overview of what we did in chronological order. Also, I was obviously responding with some images to images others have posted. I hope this sets where not too boring.
If you refer to my architectural-style text above, Philippe, the point was to control more what to do with vertical lines in architectural shots. To use lenses with shift-functionality is one approach, but using simply a wider (non-shift) lens hold parallel to the ground (without tilting it up or down) would lead to the same results. Bringing more distance between the photographer and the target helps also, because it's easier this way to keep the lens parallel to the ground. The main advantage of shift lenses is that you don't need to crop the image in some cases (vs. normal wide lenses) and in some situations non-shift lenses are simply not wide enough.
Regarding shift-lenses, I would recommend the Zeiss 35 2.8 PC or the Canon 24 TS-E II as the best compromises between IQ and useful focal lengths. Never tried the Leica you mentioned.
OK, with all sharpening methods that I know I get this aliasing. If someone has an idea, please feel free to edit my raw and repost it and share what you did.
Thanks.
Morfeus wrote:
OK, with all sharpening methods that I know I get this aliasing. If someone has an idea, please feel free to edit my raw and repost it and share what you did.
Thanks.
Thank you for the image, it is a wonderful sample to test resampling and sharpening algorithms. It is not easy to get completely rid of the aliasing, but on the other hand I find it even more difficult to get the amount that you got. Here is a first attempt - admittedly without much sharpening. My crop is slightly different from yours and I did not apply any other correction to the raw file.
Yes, without sufficient sharpening it is quite easy to get decent results. I did use my usual sharpening script in PS and LAB mode which has never failed so far, because I let it show all dialogs and can usually control the results very easily. But, I do not shoot architecture very often and it was the first time I used this lens.
Morfeus wrote:
Yes, without sufficient sharpening it is quite easy to get decent results. I did use my usual sharpening script in PS and LAB mode which has never failed so far, because I let it show all dialogs and can usually control the results very easily. But, I do not shoot architecture very often and it was the first time I used this lens.
The problem is not the sharpening, but the resampling algorithm. If the downsampling leaves a trace of aliasing, it will be boosted by sharpening. Here is a resized version with sufficient anti-aliasing (I think). Of course, the trade-off is a softer image that requires more sharpening - depending on your taste. What happens when you apply your usual sharpening script to the image below?
I see that there is more Urheberrechtsprobleme here. Another million for each of Markus, Philippe and myself is in order. Oh, twice each, look at the three in the centre, in both photos.
ROTFL, it looks like I have another 2 1/2 shots that I wanted to post Scary that my shots look so different than yours. I never would have thought it possible, but six people going to exactly the same places can end up with six different styles!
Very nice shots, Heinz, yours I mean. The reflection series are very interesting. The first Reichstag shot is another postcard, in the best sense, and the people shots are also interesting!
Morfeus wrote:
looks good after sharpening. What did you do to resize?
I haven't tried this, so maybe it doesn't work, but try to avoid even ratios, like 25%, 50%, and so on. I downsize by 62% twice in my algorithm, and the final resize goes to the desired size. By doing it in odd ratios, you force the image to be resampled, and avoids doubling up on existing artifacts.
