LBJ2 wrote:
Yeah. I just love everything about this one. This is print material for sure. Bravo!
Thank you very much, Lawrence!
1bwana1 wrote:
Joshua,
What kind of sorcery to you practice to control the Earth and the Skies that way?
Steve, that area in the winter is magical. You should go there and check it out. We always plan our trip to coincide with the full moon each time and that's the bonus. You go for the wildlife and you get away with more than just that from Bosque del Apache, New Mexico. Our next trip will be in December around the 11th, BTW. You know how to get hold of me if you are interested. Birdie, Bobby, Fred, Luz and myself will be there, pretty much for our annual trip.
AGeoJO wrote:
Thank you very much, Brian! And no, I don't do focus stacking infrequently and if I did, I specify it, unless I forgot about that completely
Steve, thank you very much! Yes, the area is very photogenic. Enjoy your time in the Dolomites! I will be going to Ecuador for some bird photography by the end of October/early November.
Thank you very much, Scott! It was drizzling at varying intensity the whole day all the way into that evening when I took that image. I used a simple plastic bag to protect my gear from the rain and I had my wife’s umbrella to prevent me from being drenched. She waited nearby away from the rain. As you can from the exit, I used my A7r II for a reason: the Smooth Reflection App.
I think I will hang on to that camera regardless how sluggish it feels relative to the A7r IV. For landscape, it works just fine and 42MP is no slouch.
I haven't done a ton of portraiture with this lens, but what I have done has been tack sharp with decent compression and bokeh at f/4. I have no issues using wide open at 105mm. This was actually at f6.3 because of the bright harsh light.
I don't hesitate to use for portraits. shot a bunch of school drama performance portraits with it (can't share them) between 50 and 105mm and look great. I like to stop down a bit at the long end, even one stop improves things.
Re: portraits, I stood in as the "official photographer" at my niece's wedding in July, and did the entire typical gamut of shots, from early preparations for both the bride's team, and the groom and his guys. I've never done this before, and was very apprehensive about the final results.
Out of what I felt was somewhere between necessity and common sense, I ordered a Godox flash to work with the A7RIII, which I used much of the time, particularly daylight fill flash. This was it's primary role, given the afternoon ceremony.
I benefited from the fact that the entire wedding party looked like models! Everyone felt the results were very good - huge sigh of relief. Even had a subsequent request to shoot a friends' anniversary celebration!
Even though I had the FE 85/1.8 & the 55/1/8 with me, I wound up shooting everything on the 24-105. I didn't feel that I could risk missing important moments, or keep the wedding party standing around while I changed lenses. All shots were between f4 & f5.6.
My comment here is that the results surprised me, in a good way, from the 24-105. With the exception of a fireside, blue hour group shot that didn't work out (not the gear's fault!).
I'm not comfortable sharing the images here (sorry!), but I'd like to say that the 24-105 acquitted itself very well, as did the A7RIII in terms of Eye C-AF, which was used almost exclusively.
Cross posted from FE image thread. I picked up my 24-105 with a scratch on the front element but so far hasn't made any significant difference (except the crazy low price).
There's a few options, I sometimes use Nik Colour Efex Pro to bump midtone contrast. I'm not sure what the state is with the NIK software package but it was free for a while, check it out. another option is to use dehaze in conjunction with the grad tool so you're just dehazing the top right.
johnahill wrote:
Hope this helps (and you don't mind me playing with your image)
I think grad tool/dehaze probably best
Not at all, I think you're right the grad tool with dehaze is bringing a lot more depth to the mountain in the back. I think what was bothering me was the background looking kind of like a flat wall. Thanks for the tips!
