Amazing shots everyone, "fit ti be tied", the colour in your Italy shots is beautiful - anyway this lens is amazing really - although technically not perfect, it is the best zoom my 5dII has seen.
Thank you jotdeh and Bernie for your kind words. Bernie, your cemetery shots are very moving indeed. They evoke a lot of history and emotion! My "go-to" lens seems to be the 35-70 because it is so versatile, especially when you consider that it also has a very good macro function. My only "complaint" about the lens is that since it is push-pull it acts like a mini vacuum cleaner and sucks air/dust onto the sensor.
Bernie, I have also discovered (as Luka and Samuli and others have explained) that when you downsize images, the original sharpness is often partly lost. Everyone seems to be using PS scripts to slowly downsize the images to the final size, with in-between sharpening steps.
There must be a better way, some way of exporting properly sharpened from Aperture and Lightroom without going through PS.
Btw, your greens look a little muted. Funny, I thought I was the Nikon user and you the Canon user
carstenw wrote:
Bernie, I have also discovered (as Luka and Samuli and others have explained) that when you downsize images, the original sharpness is often partly lost. Everyone seems to be using PS scripts to slowly downsize the images to the final size, with in between sharpening steps.
There must be a better way, some way of exporting properly sharpened from Aperture and Lightroom without going through PS.
That's my homework for this winter! My posted jpeg images are sooo lousy compared to what what's originally on my screen. I'm still spending my premium time getting out in the field as often as possible but with the dark months coming up - I promised myself to learn correct PP workflow and other photo software amenities. Discipline!
carstenw wrote:
There must be a better way, some way of exporting properly sharpened from Aperture and Lightroom without going through PS.
I have wondered this as well. I'm not a PS user and would probably be lost running scripts.... I would like to know the best export method from LR which would result in the best quality web sized pic.
fit ti be tied wrote:
Thank you jotdeh and Bernie for your kind words. Bernie, your cemetery shots are very moving indeed. They evoke a lot of history and emotion! My "go-to" lens seems to be the 35-70 because it is so versatile, especially when you consider that it also has a very good macro function. My only "complaint" about the lens is that since it is push-pull it acts like a mini vacuum cleaner and sucks air/dust onto the sensor.
I don't know about the dust pump analogy as in being any worse than other lenses. There is air movement - but it's a small lens and many prime lenses that have larger end elements travel near the same distance during focusing. Don't pump it so fast!
mMontag wrote:
That's my homework for this winter! My posted jpeg images are sooo lousy compared to what what's originally on my screen. I'm still spending my premium time getting out in the field as often as possible but with the dark months coming up - I promised myself to learn correct PP workflow and other photo software amenities. Discipline!
That is for sharpening before resizing, which is entirely different. I am perfectly happy with the sharpening tools in both Lightroom and Aperture for sharpening at full size. The tricky thing is to have some control over sharpening after resizing. As far as I know, neither can show you the image after resizing, and let you sharpen on it, unless you reimport. I tuned the settings in the frame plugin I am using by repeatedly exporting and looking at the results, hardly a good workflow.
There are soooo many ways to downsize sharpen jpeg output well, and many more opinions to the subject - which tells me that it is a complex challenge and like mMontag suggests, behooves us to spend some time reviewing and refining individual processes.
Equipment is also changing perceptions - LCDs are very different from CRTs, even good ones, and high end LCDs will tolerate less sharpening than medium quality ones. Also, many images do not benefit from bleeding edge sharpness, quite the contrary. And, each photographer has an individual attitude to his/her work regarding the importance of sharpness to the work's impact.
It's important to keep in mind that since we shoot RAW mostly, you can always re-process at a later date; and that it is no bad thing, copyright infringement and image theft being rife, to show less than super sharp images on any web forum.
I have read a lot on the subject but still feel quite ignorant, so I am willing to look at advice from all quarters. What I have read is that the step sharpening approach is unnecessary these days, many or most experts seem to agree on that point, and resize in one step followed by a favourite final sharpening method.
The guys I feel are most interested in sharpness control of the highest order are retouchers. One such person who has some seemingly excellent ideas on the subject is Patrick Lavoie who has posted over at photo.net for some time. Here are a couple of recent threads with his and many other peoples' ideas on the subject:
Maybe one reason no one sharpening method (a silver bullet) has attained preeminence is that images need individual attention for sharpness as for many other attributes, like tone, colour and contrast.
alba63, the cemetery shots are great, with delicious cool light and lots of resolution - but they could benefit from a little more chroma/saturation. Almost palpable sense of 3d also, even in the non-path images - thanks for posting.
@ Anden & philber. Thank you both for the kind words. We actually do have a house at Lake Como, but we wanted to experience the vendemmia (grape harvest) and white truffle festival in Alba, so we rented a small farmhouse in Vigliano d' Asti, half way between Asti and Alba. During the early morning hours, truffle hunters walk the forest below the house with their dogs looking for the elusive white funghi under oak and hazelnut trees.
Impressed by everyone's posts and the performance of my 2/35ZE, I sold the 24-105L and bought a new old stock 35-70 one for $700 on Ebay. Though I'm confident that the Contax will best the 24-105, after searching around on the internet, I think I may have overpaid a little. Oh well, I guess its worth the ease of mind. Can someone give some advice on a well made adapter for the 5D2 that will fit snugly? Don't care for AF confirmation. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Glad you like it!