Misty Twin Peaks & Mountain Crevices

[Mike Buckley]

Christina, the first image is improved but the second one is an example of how improved PP and recomposing it via crop made it a totally different and dramatically improved image. Nice job.

Agreed.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Dan, John, and Mike


John...

As always, truly appreciated. You're a wealth of technical information but for someone like me who is still in the learning process, it is sometimes akin to reading Tolstoy's War & Peace in one fell swoop. ie; with respect to technical details a little too much all at once. However, a BIG thank you to you. I will save this for future reference, and I will also review that link again.

Mike,

Thank you for the explanation. So if the subject is far away and one wishes to convey the feeling of being able to walk into the scene along a path the sharpest apertures are sufficient for DOF?

[Mike Buckley]

So if the subject is far away and one wishes to convey the feeling of being able to walk into the scene along a path the sharpest apertures are sufficient for DOF?

If the path is in the foreground but still such a long distance away from you that you would be using a 300mm lens on your camera, which has a 1.5 crop factor, the sharpest apertures will also provide a depth of field that will keep the entire scene in focus. Once you review the distance on a DOF chart indicating the vast distances that are in focus, that will become more clear without having to refer to it at the time of shooting.

[ajohnw]

There are several things that have an effect on sharpness. The lens is the easiest to deal with. Generally it will work at it's best closed down by 2 stops. Add a converter and it's likely to be shut down 1 stop less than the converter gives. On something like the Nikon 300mm F4 without converter your unlikely to notice much difference what ever aperture you use unless you start using F22 on things with a lot of detail and I do mean a lot. It's an unusually well designed lens - on crop. You might at F16 too. It's a bit dependent on how many pixels the camera has.

Oddly I have shot a lot of landscapes but that has left me rather picky. What I found is that usually something in the scene needs to be sharp so I would focus on that and then make a judgement about what aperture to use to get the DOF. The 2 things you have mentioned that need to be sharp are the trees and a path. The image produced will always be at it's sharpest where the lens is focused. The problem with judgements is that they are experienced based guesses. Just like the old chestnut focus 1/3 in and pick an aperture. That one actually may well leave the far distance blurred. It's just saying doh the depth of field is deeper past the focus point and shorter in front of it. 1/2 actually would be a lot safer for maximum sharpness at a distance but still leaves the aperture guess.

Hyperfocal distance and that style of dof calculator are a bit of a bad joke in some ways. I'll use the original imperial units. They are based on final image sizes of 10x8in and set so that supposedly wont produce noticeable blur in that size of final image. If some one wanted to produce a 20x16in they are no longer appropriated unless the viewer stands further away. If the image finishes up at 5x4 then the DOF they give is too low. It's not all that difficult to take a shot that needs to be 20x16in on a PC screen in order to be able to see all of the detail. Even larger in fact. Much the same applies to prints. The reason the 5x4 print has more dof is that the blur has been reduced. The 20x16 in practice has less because the blur is enlarged - thank heavens for what happens to shots before we actually see them as that is likely to tidy this up anyway. Another rats nest really.

The reason I take the approach I do is pretty simple really. Most of my work on film was aimed at producing 20x16 prints or slides that would be viewed at rather large sizes (if they turned out to be keepers) so had to worry about which parts of a shot were sharp - or even which parts were not at times. The interesting aspect of that chart I posted is that it removes any guesswork. For instance I know for instance that a conifer in the UK might have a trunk diameter of 400mm and can do the sums in my head IF I feel the need and I can guess fractional distances. The chart is probably what I would use for extreme wide angle shots but this time worrying about the foreground detail. I'd probably focus 1/2 way into the frame and add a fiddle factor as this method just like the usual DOF calc is only an approximation, I didn't have such extreme wide angle lenses shooting film.

Bill's point in the link I posted is that framing also sets depth of field. He's shooting action shots that are all over the place with a zoom. He sets an aperture based on the actual size of the items he has in the frame what ever the distance to the subject is. In other words if he fames something 8ft tall the aperture needed is the same for all focal lengths. There is a fiddle factor in his sums too. He's a very capable photographer.

Going back to a point I have made before. If you had focused to 4km everything from 1/2km to infinity would be in focus as far as DOF calcs are concerned even at F8. From 1/4km to infinity at F16. You might say it doesn't really matter where you focus again. Even at 2km the near limit has hardly changed and far is still infinite. Focus at 1km and oh dear near is about 1/3 km. This is emphasising the point Mike made. If you did have sharpness problems it's more likely to be mist or you didn't focus 1/3 of the way into the view as seen through the viewfinder - or any other fraction probably as it turns out. I'd hope you don't use the focus distance scales on the lens. At short distances they can be useful for quick snap shots - preset - raise camera and shoot, but that's about it.

John
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[Brownbear]

Mike... Thank you for addressing my question. I forgot to say that I tried your levels suggestion and it worked fine. I will revisit the 2nd image at a later date and try again.

John... Thank you for a lovely and easy to understand explanation full of great tips!

[wtlwdwgn]

I think both images are much improved. If you don't care for the sky in #1 you might try the Graduated Filter tool at - 0.25 and drag down from the top but I think it looks pretty good as is. Just my two cents.

[bnnrcn]

Your edits look fine Christina Dealing with a DOF calculator might be distracting while shooting as Mike says if you haven't examined it at home to get familiar with it. I actually examined it and went out to make some trials with different focal lengths . For my shooting practise, I usually go around on my scooter to explore some places to shoot and after deciding a place to shoot I go there again another day and shoot. So, I have enough time to work with the DOF calculator anyway and I just try to guess the distances while shooting. I actually do this as a practise to improve my sense of DOF. If you examine the DOF calculator, you will see that sharpness at infinity is already not a problem with a wide angle lens.With telephoto lenses you may have a DOF problem if your subject is close to you, but in your case your subject is far away anyway.So, act in the way you feel comfortable. This is the way I handle things as an inexperienced photographer

[Brownbear]

Steve... Thank you for sharing. I gave it a try (see the posted image below). When I applied the filter in ACR it looked fine. When I downsized the image and sharpened with an unsharp mask .4 radius at 40% the misty sky goes wonky (banding etc) and funnily enough it stays a little wonky when I erase the unsharp mask from the misty sky. Not so bad at 1200 pixels but seen at full size. I think I just need more experience photographing and processing misty scenes, as the mist in the sky is just not as beautiful as it is in real life.

Binnur... Thank you for a great idea. I will do just that the next time around. ie; figure it out as best as I can prior to it.

Last try edit on that 1st image.... Using Steve's suggestion, Mike's levels trick and I made the white balance cooler... Less blue than the first image but cooler than the 2nd edit.




Thank you.

[Mike Buckley]

This last image is even more satisfying to me. I especially like the higher black point and the cooler white balance.

The leading lines and the mist at the top made the image special enough to warrant taking the time to make the improvements.

[Brownbear]

Thank you

This last image is even more satisfying to me. I especially like the higher black point and the cooler white balance.

The leading lines and the mist at the top made the image special enough to warrant taking the time to make the improvements.

[bnnrcn]

Your last edit is very good indeed, blacks make the mist stand out more

[FrankMi]

Excellent improvement indeed Christina! The changes are subtle but very effective. Once in a while, grab one of your first postings of an image that you are learning with, and switch between the first and final image to see how far you've progressed!

[Brownbear]

Thank you Binnur and Frank, and to everyone who helped me with these images. I feel like I'm progressing with my mountain images, thanks to everyone here. And also my post processing.

Frank... Thank you for that tip. I know how to do that in LR and I will figure out how to do it in Photoshop CC.