2019 Project 52 by David ("Rufus")

[Cantab]

It should be possible to crop a little from the bottom and show the wall base then clone over that remaining bit of dark road shadow. But I don't really have any serious problems with your original edited version which shows all the main elements of that scene.

I agree with Geoff. Your original edited version works for me.

[MerleP]

Okay, so, I am going to take the plunge and start a Project 52 for 2019

All being well such a public commitment will motivate me to go out and take more, many more, photographs. In doing so I hope to get far more familiar with my camera and increase my understanding along the way.

Of course, this is fine as an aspiration but the first problem was that I could not come up with a topic that might last a year, so I decided to break the project up into 4 quarters with a new thread for each quarter.

I tend to keep my 24-105mm f/4 lens on my camera and it has rapidly become by default lens. For my project I shall ditch that for the first half of the year. So, in Q1 I shall use my 35mm f/2 lens and in Q2 I shall use my 135mm f/2 lens. I shall not limit all my photography to a single lens, but I shall definitely concentrate my efforts for the first half of 2019 on the "lens of the quarter" and only post those images here.

The 35mm is not especially wide and the 135mm lens is a short telephoto, but they suit my tastes as I prefer landscapes and buildings that are not taken with very wide angle lenses and I do not attempt wildlife shots that would require a much longer lens.

By the way, I shall not tempt fate by deciding on the common themes for Q3 and Q4.

As part of my project I shall revisit the CiC tutorials on lenses and make some notes (as I learn best that way) and I shall be able to enhance them with insight gained from the generosity of fellow members on CiC.

Having chosen a lens as a common theme for Q1 it leaves me with the widest selection of subject matter – there is method in my madness!

Although my project is not about post processing, all comments are welcome whatever aspect they address.

Week 1 will appear shortly, and I will add a link in my signature box to this 2019 P52 thread and the guidance information about the Project 52 which has been published in the past.

Good luck to everyone participating in their own 2019 Project 52 and thank you to everyone who supports us. Happy 2019!

Good to see you join in the P52. I so much enjoy your images from the UK, and especially your area. Your goals are great, and especially to the point of learning and practicing and getting good images.

[Rufus]

Good to see you join in the P52. I so much enjoy your images from the UK, and especially your area. Your goals are great, and especially to the point of learning and practicing and getting good images.

Thank you for your encouragement, Merle. Although concentrating on prime lenses in Q1 and Q2 I think my P52 will inevitably mean my post procssing skillset will be extended too, which is great.

I am also hoping this year to produce some images that rely less on luck; but I couldn't really set that as a goal

Meanwhile I have already discovered how up close and personal I need to get to take the ponies with a 35mm lens!

[Rufus]

Geoff and Bruce - thank you for your comments on the crop.

I cropped in Lightroom before burning the timbers in Photoshop, so if I were to change the crop it seems I would have to do all that burning again. I will post a seperate thread about the workflow implications.

[Manfred M]

Geoff and Bruce - thank you for your comments on the crop.

I cropped in Lightroom before burning the timbers in Photoshop, so if I were to change the crop it seems I would have to do all that burning again. I will post a seperate thread about the workflow implications.

That is why I do as little as possible in Lightroom / Adobe Camera Raw and do the bulk of the processing using a non-destructive work flow in Photoshop. Using layer masks and SmartFilters. The crop tool in Photoshop, so long as the "Delete Cropped Pixels" box is not checked would let you do just that and be done in a few seconds rather than having to rework the entire image again.

[Rufus]

A large blister on my heel, courtesy of last week's expedition, had been reluctant to heal so I avoided walking very far this week and opted for an indoor experiment with focus stacking. This is a new topic for me.

As I am concentrating this quarter on my 35mm lens, not having a macro lens is not an issue for this purpose.

One immediate benefit of the exercise was that I had to delve into the camera manual and find out how to keep the live view displayed for long enough to manually focus! Success with that, at least.

The closest focusing distance is said to be 24cm/9.5inches. As the lens is wide angle, I chose subjects of sufficient size: a small clock set in cut glass and pair of kitchen scissors.

The clock is approximately 8cm / 3 inches tall and only 2.5cm / 1 inch front to back, and the visible part of the side is less than that. In theory, the image would be fully in focus at f/11 (which would give a 2.6cm depth of field). However, angled it so that one side was closer to camera than the other and I opened the aperture up to f/2 to reduce the depth of field and create a need for the stacking exercise.

The resulting image of the clock seemed rather soft to me so I decided the next subject should have more clearly defined edges and contrast.

Week 4, Image #9 – Waterford Crystal Clock (focus stacked):
1/125 Sec at f/2 and ISO 100 (13 images)



The scissors as presented to the camera were 25cm / 10 inches from front to back. I shot the focus stacking images and then attempted a single image with the entire subject in focus as a comparison.

Week 4, Image #10 – Scissors (focus stacked):
1/8 sec at f/2 and ISO 100 (12 images)



Week 4, Image #11 – Scissors (single image)
10 sec @ f16 and ISO 100



Two problems became apparent. Firstly, I would have liked more light coming into the camera when focusing in live view.

Then, having created the stacked image in Photoshop, the filename is automatically changed. So the Save option which would normally be used to save back into Lightroom is greyed out. I therefore saved the stacked image as a new filename in my Lightroom folder, but cannot import it. That may be because I set up Lightroom to import CR2 RAW files. I shall have to find which settings to change to enable me to import PSD or TIFF files.

All C&C always welcome.

[Geoff F]

The first thing I notice with the clock is that you have chosen an imaginative angle but the verticals are slightly leaning. The clock face is perfectly sharp but the base does indeed seem slightly soft; although I wonder if that is partly due to the rounded edges instead of having firm sharp edged angles in that area. Certainly a tricky shot for several reasons.

The foreground of the second scissors image is noticeably softer than the previous focus stacked image; which proves your stacking attempts are working. For me, shooting from that angle which produces overly large handles and small blades isn't the most artistic of images. However, it does clearly show the difference between a straight shot and focus stacking which was your main purpose.

I have never been able to work with live view shooting either for composition or focusing. It has to be the sharper and clearer viewfinder alternative for me.

Lightroom has always been a needlessly complicated option to my way of working. I start with ACR in Bridge for my initial tweaking before switching the image to Photoshop CC then eventually saving as a psd format. I tend to convert the original Canon Raw format to DNG for storage of the original file, thinking that while various forms of CRW may change DNG should remain universal. But there probably isn't much real sense to doing that.

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts post 26, I did a bit of LiveView focusing today and what I used was a continuous light to setup the shot and modified with a diffuser as I did the actual exposure.

[Rufus]

The first thing I notice with the clock is that you have chosen an imaginative angle but the verticals are slightly leaning. The clock face is perfectly sharp but the base does indeed seem slightly soft; although I wonder if that is partly due to the rounded edges instead of having firm sharp edged angles in that area. Certainly a tricky shot for several reasons.

The foreground of the second scissors image is noticeably softer than the previous focus stacked image; which proves your stacking attempts are working. For me, shooting from that angle which produces overly large handles and small blades isn't the most artistic of images. However, it does clearly show the difference between a straight shot and focus stacking which was your main purpose.

I have never been able to work with live view shooting either for composition or focusing. It has to be the sharper and clearer viewfinder alternative for me.

Lightroom has always been a needlessly complicated option to my way of working. I start with ACR in Bridge for my initial tweaking before switching the image to Photoshop CC then eventually saving as a psd format. I tend to convert the original Canon Raw format to DNG for storage of the original file, thinking that while various forms of CRW may change DNG should remain universal. But there probably isn't much real sense to doing that.

To be honest, I did not pay much attention to composition when shooting or editing the images. As you rightly perceived, I was more interested in finding out whether my first attempts at focus stacking would work and in any problems I would encounter.

The large handles and small blade of the scissors do illustrate the effect of a wide angle lens at close range.

It is true that the clock does not have many really sharp edges for the focus stacking algorithm to pick up on and when I realised that I chose a different subject, the scissors, that did have more defined edges. So I have learned from that experience.

I was pleased that the focus stacking of the scissors produced a sharper image than the single image and it was interesting to see how the final stacked image compared to the various images it was made from, and the layer masks in Photoshop.

I was interested in your comment about use of live view and the viewfinder. My Canon 6D2 has a fully articulating screen and the benefit of live view shooting is that (given enough light) I can see the image on the touchscreen, select an area and magnify it by x10 for more accurate manual focusing. I have not found a way to do that in the viewfinder. I would only focus or compose with the live view when doing close up work with a tripod. The live view screen also allows me to view the image from a more comfortable position.

I did not mention this in my post for this week, but I also tried out the Canon app that allows me to display the live view on my iPad. I found that it took a long while for the image on the iPad to refresh as I changed the focus. That was a very disappointing first use, but I will definitely try it out again in more favourable conditions.

I used Bridge and Photoshop originally, and did not understand what Bridge could do other than display PSD files that did not show as a preview in Windows File Explorer. People locally said that creating a databse in Bridge was tedious, and of little benefit. Lightroom seemed like a neat solution which combined the functionality of both Bridge and Photoshop into a single package. Now I have discovered I need Photoshop for layers and all sorts of clever stuff! However, I do like Lightroom's Library and Print module. But rather as Manfred has said elsewhere, I suspect I shall come to rely less on Lightroom and more on Photoshop for editing as I gain more experience, take more photos that are worth working on, and improve my editing skills.

I feel the P52 discipline and the many helpful contributions from you and other community members are already taking me in the right direction. Thank you for commenting Geoff.

[Rufus]

Nice efforts post 26, I did a bit of LiveView focusing today and what I used was a continuous light to setup the shot and modified with a diffuser as I did the actual exposure.

I should bear this in mind for the future when I start to think more about lighting in this type of situation. I was using a single daylight LED panel for both focusing and the shot to save worrying about flash.

Thank you for your comment, John.

[Rufus]

I decided to try out focus stacking again this week. I selected some picture hanging hardware as it is both shiny and has some sharp pointed nails, so some areas might be easier than others for the software to deal with.

I used f/5.6 for the stacking to ensure the DOF was not too limited in the individual shots used for stacking and as a comparison I took a single image at f22/ for maximum DOF.

(Please ignore the backround imperfections as I these were not the object of the exercise and no attempt was made to edit them.)

Week 5, Image #12 - Picture hooks (focus stacked)
1/4 sec at f5.6 and ISO 100 (13 images)



Week 5, Image #13 - Picture hooks (single image)
6 sec at f/22 and ISO 100




I always welcome C&C.

[Geoff F]

That nicely shows the difference.

With the unstacked scene, even the bits which are in focus don't appear to be as sharp as the stacked version. Possibly the lens is starting to get a bit soft at F22 ?

[Rufus]

With the unstacked scene, even the bits which are in focus don't appear to be as sharp as the stacked version. Possibly the lens is starting to get a bit soft at F22?

Yes, expect it is. I had appreciated that a lens is not at it sharpest either wide open or stopped down in the extreme, but you have prompted me to take a look at the CiC tutorials. I have gleaned a little about diffraction ocurring when the aperture is small; and my guess is that, all other things being equal, the diffraction it is likely to be greater with a wide angle lens because the light coming from the wider angle will hit the sensor further from the lens axis than if it was a telephoto lens.

Thank you for your comment.

[Manfred M]

David - diffraction is caused by a wave passing through a very narrow opening, for instance a stopped down lens iris. The light bends and does not fall on the same place on the sensor. It is not related to the focal length of the lens. Don't forget that when the lens is stopped down, the light from the edges of the lens that are transmitted at a wide aperture are blocked by the iris at narrow apertures and only the light from the middle parts of the lens get through to the sensor.

[Rufus]

David - diffraction is caused by a wave passing through a very narrow opening, for instance a stopped down lens iris. The light bends and does not fall on the same place on the sensor. It is not related to the focal length of the lens. Don't forget that when the lens is stopped down, the light from the edges of the lens that are transmitted at a wide aperture are blocked by the iris at narrow apertures and only the light from the middle parts of the lens get through to the sensor.

Manfred - you have put it so clearly and succinctly that I actually understand now that I was pretty much completely wrong! Thank you for putting me right. I shall return to the tutorial with this insight.

[Rufus]

Uninspiring weather has been a disincentive recently. A non-productive expedition earlier in the week heightened my resolve and today I ventured out despite the dull overcast conditions. P52 does impose a discipline! It has rained a lot recently so the water level at Hatchet Pond was higher than usual and the ground rather soggy.

The pond was created around 200 years ago by damming of the Hatchet stream to power a local mill. The origin of the area name ‘Hatchet’ is thought to refer to a gateway, as this area was where commoners drove their livestock onto the New Forest.

Week 6, Image #14 - Tree at Hatchet Pond
1/500 sec at f/8 and ISO 400. The high speed was to avoid movement blur from wind in the tree.


Week 6, Image #15 - Reflections at Hatchet Pond
1/90 sec at f/11 and ISO 200

[Cantab]

David, I like both photos. The first one made me think of a painting by Constable or Turner; I'm not entirely sure why but presumably the reason is something about the landscape you captured (albeit in winter).

[FootLoose]

I like the colours in these two photos David, especially in the 2nd. I think the tree in the first image would be a good subject on its own if you were able to find the right position without getting bogged.

[Geoff F]

I am thinking along similar lines to Greg. With the first image the tree is leaning towards the top left corner which takes my eyes towards that area while the right side is a bit bland particularly in the top right corner sky. So I would consider a crop to give something like a 4 x 5 ratio on the tree and lose part of the right side. For me, that would produce a stronger scene. Exposure is fine and yes I would have also used similar settings for that shot in those conditions.

Maybe the sky is a fraction tight to the top edge in the second image while there is plenty of somewhat blank water at the bottom? I would probably be thinking about adding just a little more sky to the top or even cropping a fraction from the bottom and right side which I suspect would make a better balance with the current tight sky.

But these are just suggestions for slight tweaks, the general scenes have come out OK for such tricky conditions.

[Rufus]

I am thinking along similar lines to Greg. With the first image the tree is leaning towards the top left corner which takes my eyes towards that area while the right side is a bit bland particularly in the top right corner sky. So I would consider a crop to give something like a 4 x 5 ratio on the tree and lose part of the right side. For me, that would produce a stronger scene. Exposure is fine and yes I would have also used similar settings for that shot in those conditions.

I agree. It was only when I came to process the image that I realised the tree leans the "wrong way". Your suggested crop would indeed make for a stronger image.

Maybe the sky is a fraction tight to the top edge in the second image while there is plenty of somewhat blank water at the bottom? I would probably be thinking about adding just a little more sky to the top or even cropping a fraction from the bottom and right side which I suspect would make a better balance with the current tight sky.

I have some head room to retrieve some sky. I had cropped it out because it was not very interesting, although I subsequently was able to get some colour variation from it.

There was even more foreground water in the unprocessed shot! I left a reasonable amount in because the bullrushes/reeds were not at their best and so I was trying to manage the viewer's perception so that they would not be thought of as a strong main subject. I was hoping the graduated filter applied to the water would help reduce the impact of its expanse and ground the image.

So anyway, that was my rationale behind my processing of the two images.

Your comments are much appreciated and I will post revised images. I had already been dodging the trees to give them more life (and because I need to practise these things).