This is a PSD not a raw. I did open it in photoshop and it is full size so I was able to see stuff not so visible at web size.
Lots of dust spots, noise in the sky and dark areas, and vignetting upper right corner. (visble here as well). There is also some banding going on.
I also have a 1DS-mk3 and when I shoot 24, I seldom go over f8. I would have done this at f8, ISO100 and had all the dof I required and less noise and fewer dust spots.
At web size, it looks fine overall. I do think I would crop the bottom shadow and the top to eliminate the vignette. The clouds look nice, I don't see any blown areas.
Ben pointed out the vignette and dust spots, so you are on it!
I think you did a great job preserving the whites in the clouds and a natural look to the sky with accurate blues. Not sure, but I think the field and trees could use a bit of sharpening.
Nice comp. A tranquil scene realistically rendered.
Scott
But with what you said about the trees and field, which I agree with you by the way, I had the aperture set to F16, so according the the Depth of Field calculator, everything from 4ft to infinity should have been in focus.
No way those trees are closer than 4ft So I am confused.
Where did you focus? According to the calculator, 4 feet ought to have been your focus point. But when I use this calculator, I set CoC at .015 which would get you a bit further out. No matter, as you said there was nothing that close which is why I said use f8.
But yesterday I did one where nothing was sharp at f8 on a 17TSE, one of the sharpest lenses Canon makes. I was just testing a polarizer and allowed focus confirm to work on a distant tree. I know what happened, the focus was past infinity.
You can't trust focus confirm on an UWA when the target is so far away, not enough detail.
For this shot I would have used live view and found something nearby that was contrasty enough to focus. Anything past 8 feet would have worked.
And it was using a featureless cloud to focus on. Good luck with that. I am pretty sure now that the AF sent your lens past infinity. This makes everything look ok, but not critically sharp on my lenses.
By the way, this is far from hyperfocal. If you want to use the DOF master to find DOF here, change the focus value to 10000 feet or so. That's as good as infinity. Your cloud was probably at least a mile, so you could use that value.
But in truth, your AF probably failed here because it had no contrast to work with.
Edit.
I took your CR2 and worked with it. Thats a lot of noise for an iso200 shot. I did some Topaz NR and when I finished ran a Topaz Pop action. This action brings out the noise at 100% so I probably needed to take a different approach.
I cleaned up some of the dust, time to send it in. Never try a wet clean on this camera. I did when I fist got it and Canon charged my insurance $2300 for a new sensor when I broke the top sensor filter.
No idea on the noise, I usually don't need NR at ISO200 with my 1DS-mk3.
By the way, the link shows my workflow. I used the camera profile for my 1ds-mk3 and added some light NR from Topaz which is not in that workflow. I also used some Shadow highlight and Topaz Photo pop with is described there.
If you don't have Topaz, the result would be a bit flatter.
I actually over-did-it-a-bit to show you how playing with the clouds can totally change your image... I opened in LR4; Custom WB off clouds; Opened in Nik Color Efex Pro and did a tonal contrast on sky; Opened CS5 and did a shadow / highlight adjustment; Ran through Topaz Simplify / oil paint; Blended image into original @ 15%... I absolutely love Topaz & Nik...
how did you get your focus points to show up on the image on your screen...just curious, I would love to be able to see that on screen when I shoot multiple frames to stack for focusing.
Awesome, Thanks, I will keep that in mind. I don't use DPP much, but have it installed. I will use that when stacking next time...still getting into that kind of thing.
So I am confused.
