My new D3 and I went to the Columbia River Gorge area east of Portland recently. It was the first time I could really put the D3 through its paces for my favorite kind of landscape photography. The following three images are from two days of working the Gorge area with fellow FMer Marc Adamus. I posted two of these in the Landscape forum a few days ago but I thought my fellow FM Nikoners here might like to see them as well.
In general they were captured with the D3, 17-35mm f2.8 zoom, B&W CPL, f-stop ranged from 16 to 22, shutter speeds one to two seconds, used both a tripod and a cable release. Processing is first through Nikon NX because I like the control points to bring our texture in the blacks, then into PS3 as a tiff and move to LAB color space for a slight tweak in the a and b channels. Sharpen in the L channel ..move back to RGB and either modify to post on the web or to print on canvas.
I have printed them up on canvas and the detail is outstanding. I really love this camera!
at that small an aperture, you're losing sharpness to diffraction effects. i try to stay f13 at most and f11 more often. my measurements indicate that my copy of the lens is best between f8 and f11 with f16 quite a bit softer.
Herb...
Phil Radlick wrote:
In general they were captured with the D3, 17-35mm f2.8 zoom, B&W CPL, f-stop ranged from 16 to 22, shutter speeds one to two seconds, used both a tripod and a cable release.
HerbChong wrote:
at that small an aperture, you're losing sharpness to diffraction effects. i try to stay f13 at most and f11 more often. my measurements indicate that my copy of the lens is best between f8 and f11 with f16 quite a bit softer.
Herb...
Depending on the effect you want, sometimes a compromise is in order.
Herb, I am aware of the diffraction effects at small apertures. In this case, to Gerald's point, I wanted the slower shutter speed to be able to get the water to look the way I wanted it. The CPL gave me about a one stop benefit in the direction of slower speed but it was not enough to get into the 1 sec range. Therefore I opted for the smaller aperture knowing that I might lose a little sharpness. As I looked over the image in PS3 after processing it I was quite pleased with the amount of detail in it. Thus for me, in this case, the compromise worked out.
i have a selection of high quality ND filters for shooting 1-30 second exposures under a wide range of lighting conditions. no amount of stopping down on any existing lens gets me there. no compromises on sharpness.
Photography does often require a trade-off. For this type of situation, I love the Singh-Ray's Variable ND. It opens up many shooting options.
BTW, I've seen some stunning pics from Tony Sweet and others taken at very small aperture. Usually, the softness is inconsequential to the overall effect. Often we can get hyper-critical. Nice pics. Look slightly underexposed, but that might be due to my laptop display.
Hey Phil, nice shots, I always enjoy seeing local pictures I shoot landscapes with the D3 as well and highly recommend grabbing a 3 and 6 stop ND filter, it will allow you to stay in iso 200 (most DR) as well as the sharpest aperture range + you wont have to worry about cloning out all the dust spots on the sensor as much
Stunningly beautiful. #2 is my favorite, but all are nice. Love the details, whatever softness there is didn't detract from the overall image composition. Thanks for sharing.
First of all, stunning shots... Just wow. The second one is something out of this world...
Not to hijack the thread, but I'm wondering what good quality ND filters are? I have a B+W 3-stop jobbie... Is that considered good? It seems good to me... But before I spend any more money on ND filters, what are good filters?
ND's evenly reduce light. This allows longer exposures, which gives running water that etherial, creamy look. Along with good NDs, graduated ND filters selectively reducing light. IMO, software can't replace these filters.
The Singh-Ray Vari ND is very expensive, but reduces the number of filters you need to carry. I also like Lee's 4X6 grad NDs filters. A set of 3 (.3, .6, and .9) cost around $200.
I shoot landscapes with the D3 as well and highly recommend grabbing a 3 and 6 stop ND filter, it will allow you to stay in iso 200 (most DR) as well as the sharpest aperture range + you wont have to worry about cloning out all the dust spots on the sensor as much 