I always loved dahlias but never had much success growing them. On the other hand I was put off roses as a child by having to retrieve balls from the middle of mother's rose beds !
Here's another view from Glenorchy, this time from the pier looking northwards across the lake, the lights being Kinloch.
leighton w wrote:
I was mowing around the edge of the garden and saw that lone sunflower against the blue sky. I stopped, walked up to the house and grabbed my camera.
cadman342001 wrote:
Lovely flowers Siphewe and Leighton.
I always loved dahlias but never had much success growing them. On the other hand I was put off roses as a child by having to retrieve balls from the middle of mother's rose beds !
Here's another view from Glenorchy, this time from the pier looking northwards across the lake, the lights being Kinloch.
Thanks Andy. Dahlias were plentiful where I grew up, possibly due to lots of sun. Roses, none. Too cold in the winter. As such, I don't know how to care for them now for the same reasons you hated retrieving balls. Wife loves and cares for them. No complaints here.
Lovely views, as usual. Looks like we are heading for a very hot summer here, hitting > 90F (> 30 deg C) a few days this week and we aren't even at Spring.
leighton w wrote:
I don't own any AF lenses, so I'm forced to use my MF ones. I think at this point, it would probably be difficult for me to even use an AF lens. My cameras for the past 10 years or so have all been setup to use MF, so I've ignored all the settings for auto focus on them thus making me somewhat ignorant on their use.
And I see your MF experience in the way your shots have well placed focus planes. Won't try to talk you back into AF. However, if you did want to, the use of single point, non-continuous AF, with the AF-On button on Nikons (and I'm sure called something else on other platforms) comes pretty close to MF use, no complicated AF settings to worry about; instead of twirling the focus ring, you just hit a button. I shoot most of my AF travel shots that way, mostly focus and recompose, unless an exact focus plane is critical.
D700 + AI Zoom Nikkor 35-70mm f/3.5-4.8S | F5.6 ISO 800 -0.33EV
Love the brush of light across the left petals, and the sharp flowers all across the frame.
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cadman342001 wrote:
Lovely flowers Siphewe and Leighton.
I always loved dahlias but never had much success growing them. On the other hand I was put off roses as a child by having to retrieve balls from the middle of mother's rose beds !
Here's another view from Glenorchy, this time from the pier looking northwards across the lake, the lights being Kinloch.
About the AF recommendation. I agree with you about using back-button focusing. When I did use AF lenses, I always used the back-button to focus, works very well with continuous focus setting.
For some reason, I like this. Maybe because to me it looks just like the eye would see the scene. I've mentioned before that I'm partial to minimally processed images. Is it the first time we have a brick wall in this board? Jose gave us roofs for lens tests, Rafael gives us trees and shrubs. This board's different.
85mm f/1.8 at the beach. I need to put these through better de-noise algorithms, what do folks like? I know there are much better options than Lr for this.
AdaptedLenses wrote:
85mm f/1.8 at the beach. I need to put these through better de-noise algorithms, what do folks like? I know there are much better options than Lr for this.
I was under the impression that Lightroom has gotten much better at this. I wish I could find the thread where they were all compared in the main board. In this board, I'd love to hear what Colin says as I think he shoots at night a lot and I think his de-noising skill is above average.
I use an older version of Topaz Denoise AI when I need to but I can also say that I'm not a demanding user.
The first version of your image looks like this when run through the Lowest settings in Denoise AI 3.7.2 [Remove Noise -> Low, Enhance Sharpness-> Low]
It'll be a pass mark for me, especially for the seeming recovery of detail in the grass.
AdaptedLenses wrote:
85mm f/1.8 at the beach. I need to put these through better de-noise algorithms, what do folks like? I know there are much better options than Lr for this.
Siphiwe is right, Topaz is great, but I believe that's all it does, noise reduction. My main photo editing software is On1. They have recently come out with a new version of their noise reduction in a stand alone, or inside of Photo Raw 2024 (which I use) that works just as well as Topaz, IMHO.
I use LR Denoise with the latest LR Classic and it works well enough that I am not looking for alternatives. That and I'm already paying for LR, won't pay for yet another piece of software.
Jose gave us roofs for lens tests, Rafael gives us trees and shrubs. This board's different.
