Thanks for the replies/comments guys. I didn't get to contribute much for the last few months, so I am glad I could participate a little bit.
@Samuli - Yes, I think I am sort of in the opposite boat. I am not witness to a great many being there events right now, so I just try and make hay while the sun shines, as they say
Gsteve- Great results with extension tubes. Must say it is sort of weird to realize that flies look a lot like crabs in that scale, and I love crabs........ hm
Jim - Great lighting on the cat shot
Victor - Really nice bokeh from 50MP
mjaasborg - Love those texures
joekraft - wow, pretty !
alkanphel - beautiful b/w shot. It reminds me of ink and wash painting ( aka sumie )
Samuli- Great capture of light on the bench shot.
Bob - Beautiful shots. #1 is my fav
juan - nice pano. Quite a dramatic color of water.
FlyPenFly- Love that water dripping off of the bench. nice shot and perspective
Jim - Jus love that bokeh and vignetting on the fence shot from 35 / f2 great color and composition
Joakm - Beautiful shots. Great contrast of the two shots as a set
FlyPenFly - Is that from Rockfeller center ??
Johnblack - nice shot
John, very nice full body portrait. I wish I would have models, who would not kill me after taking photos with Makro-Planar
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On Austria holiday 2nd day started early, before 6AM, I wanted to capture Vienna in good light. Naturally my bad luck continued and weather turned to 100% cloud cover overcast just as I step out from the hotel. Took some photos, on the light what was available and waited the rental car to be available to get away from Vienna.
Hmm...saturday morning now, so let me try to catch up with the last one or two pages
Jim - some fantastic shots from the 35/2. Like 'em all but #4 is my favorite. Very good & strong reds in the other photos as well. You are putting this lens to very good use already!
Joekraft: love the blue and yellow shot. Strong and crisp colors !
Jae: plenty of good shots from NY in multiple threads. Keep the "jaetography" coming
Samuli: Love the very first shot from Austria. The mountains in the background, the clouds are all awesome. Do you have shots of that place without the rental car ? In the previous page, I like the first image again - centered composition works for me . ditto with the 2nd.
John: nice to see some posts from you. Thanks for your website for the helpful information. Read it several times while deciding on my 100/2CY. Do you still have both the CY and ZE version now?
Joakim: very good tones in the BW and nice soft light in the winter shot too!
I think I'll post a few more from Oly NP before I bunch them all together in a separate thread or someting. After that I'll change gears and post shots from Zion NP and Death Valley NP.
First one is with the 21 @ f/13, 1/2s, ISO100. Rest are from the small MP @f/2. The fern shot was shot at f/11, 6s, ISO100 [4stop ND]
1. Sol Duc waterfalls
I have several shots from this place and this was taken from a tripod on a bridge I did not have much room to fine-tune the composition that much. I think I have some shots @17mm that capture more of the falls. Here I wanted some part of the falls and also some part of the trees in the background
2. Essence of the Hoh
Just wanted to show how dense the growth in the rainforest can be. The Makro helped to achieve just that.
FlyPenFly wrote:
The level of detail captured on 1 is just insane. What aperture and lens was it? Great comp.
I read almost excellent sharpness/resizing/processing...
abhijeeth, did you use warm white balance in "Sol Duc waterfalls" (and "Essence of the Hoh") on purpose (I like the photos, but this kind of technical thing bugs me when I watch photos)? It looks way too warm and soft to me. Liked also your wife's "Fresh". Regards mountains without ugly rental car; they are coming, I try to process photos in order (by date & time) since all earlier holidays I just process few photos and then got bored and I have lots and lots of photos from all past holidays, which I have never seen larger than 400-500px thumbnails when browsing photos. PS. Many photos I post to other Zeiss thread since I used C/Y Distagon 25 quite a lot.
Trusty, funny portrait I cannot imagine any other name but "who farted?"
While in Austria I found out that even Makro-Planar 100 is great landscape lens, it has big challenges to keep everything in focus. This is because major part of the brilliance and look what is normal to MP100 is lost when stopping down to f/8 (and more in smaller apertures). Some of the photos appear great in small size, but at normal size (A3 print or 30" 2560x1600 display) it can be clearly seen that some parts of the photo are not in focus, e.g. the first photo below.
Thumbnails below are links to bigger size versions.
Gloggnitz - Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 2/100 @ f/5.6, 1/250s, ISO 100
Gloggnitz - Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 2/100 @ f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO 100
Breltenstein - Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 2/100 @ f/5.6, 1/320s, ISO 100
Samuli Vahonen wrote:
abhijeeth, did you use warm white balance in "Sol Duc waterfalls" (and "Essence of the Hoh") on purpose (I like the photos, but this kind of technical thing bugs me when I watch photos)? It looks way too warm and soft to me. Liked also your wife's "Fresh". Regards mountains without ugly rental car; they are coming, I try to process photos in order (by date & time) since all earlier holidays I just process few photos and then got bored and I have lots and lots of photos from all past holidays, which I have never seen larger than 400-500px thumbnails when browsing photos. PS. Many photos I post to other Zeiss thread since I used C/Y Distagon 25 quite a lot. ...Show more →
This is the part that I love most about photography - our (sometimes different) individual tastes and preferences. ! Thanks for the frank feedback, and please keep it coming, they are well taken, but I just love these the way they are now !
Both shots are Camera Standard profile and Cloudy WB preset (which on the 5d2 is quite warm).
WB wise, the 2nd one is pretty darn close to being spot on, and I shot it at f/2, so everything is not sharp and in focus (on purpose).
Again, WB wise, the first one is quite close but still some deviation is present [on the values of browns on the tree-trunks in the BG, - which I could finesse further. That is w.r.t the WB.
Regarding the softness, the big part of the waterfall is right below and to the right [not in the photo], so it looks small and innocent here but it does kick up a lot of spray and mist constantly [==> wipe lens often]. So that gives the soft low contrast look on top of some underlying detail. It would have looked similar even if I shot it at f/5.6. I find this look especially appealing for forests.
For a similar reason, I feel the 50 1.4 or 35 1.4 would also have excelled in recording these scenes the way I wanted to convey them. Even the 35/2 would have helped. (For the 35/2, excellent contrast on coarse structures, less so on the finer structures - which most folks here talk about)
Me and my wife also experimented with exhaling on the lens for a partial exposure [nothing new there, an old trick used by folks] to render the highlights even softer and the results were cool. It is somewhat crazy and counter-intuitive to do it on one of the sharpest lenses there is, but fun nevertheless.
Another thing w.r.t WB is it looks reasonable to me on my calibrated "main" monitor. The tree trunks do look warmer on my other uncal'd devices. [Not suggesting yours is uncal'd, but it is another thing to keep in mind, apart from our different tastes!]
Finally, talking of cars in mountains...I thought this might be cool too!
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W.r.t your photo set, I like the layered effect [different hues of green + fog] in the 2nd one. Looking forward to seeing more of your shots from this trip
:Trusty, funny portrait I cannot imagine any other name but "who farted?"
Trusty: I was wondering about that too: "why is he closing his nose?" !!