Canon -v- Nikon -v- Others: TEAM CHALLENGE - Week ending 01 Mar 09

[Bm7b5]

Team Canon

135 lens +1.4 TC 1 flash bounced
I think it was f 3.5

Nice image.

[Colin O'Regan]

Awesome shot Hansm.

Another for Canon.
ISO 100
AV 5.6
TV 1/40
135 mm

[Colin O'Regan]

How small do I need to resize these pictures in order to keep the "Decorum Police" away.
My apologies, I'll keep trying.

[Colin Southern]

How small do I need to resize these pictures in order to keep the "Decorum Police" away.
My apologies, I'll keep trying.

Seems like 680 might be the magic number (that's what it resized to on my screen), but personally, I'm not too worried so long as it's not several megabytes.

[Dave Humphries]

personally, I'm not too worried so long as it's not several megabytes.

Same goes for me too, not that I consider myself 'on the force', but I have written on the topic quite recently and may have given an overly "picky" impression.

Colin is correct with the 680 figure.

Cheers,

[Colin Southern]

I upload my work to pbase as 1024 x 512 - and link to the same sized image from here.

My personal preference (not CiC policy) is to let people have the choice of seeing them significantly larger if they wish (can reveal a significantly more detail). Even if saved at highest quality they're usually only around 400Kb - and once someone has downloaded them once they should stay cached locally.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Colin,

There are two reasons why I don't do it at 1024;
1) It takes a little longer to load the page - ok not an earth-shattering reason
2) When the inline image resized, either by CiC to 680, or PBase if using a size other than 'original', to better fit the thread, it can look significantly under-sharpened - as you know, I have a history of either over or under doing that (but I hope I'm getting better)

However, I could be wrong (again).
I would rather give people access to bigger versions, hence I individually sharpened and uploaded the cycle pics at both 680 AND full resolution and display one inline and link to the other.

Cheers,

[Lincs1]

As a preference for the TEAM CHALLENGE I would like to see comments made after the closing date, yes include the EXIF and processing but leave the rest until the results come out.

Lincs1

[Dave Humphries]

For Team other: a 'wild' crocus I believe.



1/500 at f8, using ISO200, equivalent focal length 65mm with lens on "Macro" setting.

Thanks for looking,

[Colin O'Regan]

That's incredible Dave. I love that kind of stuff.

[Dave Humphries]

For Team Other again,



1/550 at f8, using ISO200, equivalent focal length 300mm.

Regards,

[Davey]

Wow the crocus is very nice! How did you you manage to get the flower so sharp and background out so much? There doesn't seem to be that much of a distance between foreground background and your S6500fd hardly has narrow dof especially on f8, some trick or clever composure or subtle pp? The colours look very vibrant too, yet still natural so if you did tweak them nice one, if not I'm shocked.

[Dave Humphries]

How did you you manage to get the flower so sharp and background out so much? ~~ some trick or clever composure or subtle pp? The colours look very vibrant too, yet still natural so if you did tweak them nice one, if not I'm shocked.

Thanks for the kind words Colin and Davey.

Yes, this did get a significant amount of PP time to get the best from it.
Shot RAW, then ACR4.3 to correct exposure, noise reduce and initial sharpen.
Elements 6 to selectively dull down and de-saturate everything surrounding the bloom and I probably did give it one sweep with the blur tool too. A further 'Neat Image' noise reduction and USM local contrast enhancement applied. Some selective sharpening of the stamen and the fallen pollen. An overall saturation boost was done, but fairly restrained. Overall sharpening applied at the image sizes posted. As with anything, if I did it again, some things would be slightly different, still learning as I go.
Since I seem to have covered the PP in some detail, I'll also own up to one more liberty. In composing the shot at that angle to get a better view inside it, I accidentally just clipped off the edge of the top petal, this spoiled it for me, so I grafted on 35 pixels and gave it an edge (not very well) and cloned all along the top edge from below. I dunno, the lengths I go to (to get a good picture).

Lincs1,
I appreciate your view, but posting such queries and replies now as things arise seems to suit most people better. Colin Southern kindly removes all the non-image posts from the thread ready for streamlined voting Sunday evening (GMT). I suppose this does have the disadvantage of losing them, but more maybe lost if everyone waited a week to ask questions. However, none of this is set in stone, as Colin will tell you, so see what people think.

Regards,

[Colin Southern]

As a preference for the TEAM CHALLENGE I would like to see comments made after the closing date, yes include the EXIF and processing but leave the rest until the results come out.

Hi Lincs1,

It's a suggestions thats been made before, but no matter how we do it, nothing suits everyone. Sean is considering/investigating a gallery option for things like this - and in the meantime I move all of the commentary "out of sight" once I close the thread and open voting so that it doesn't distract people. As alternatives we've considered ...

- No commentary: But that appears to be taking this too seriously as a competition and being counter-productive to sharing.

- Leaving the commentary in: But this makes review for voting more difficult, and probably disadvantages those whose images are on the 2nd or subsequent pages

- Leaving the commentary until after voting: But then most people will have moved on.

Additionally, from an administrative point of view it's difficult in that if the thread is open for the posting of images then theres no way to stop people posting commentary.

[Roxy]

Hi Lincs1,

It's a suggestion thats been made before, but no matter how we do it, nothing suits everyone.

- No commentary: But that appears to be taking this too seriously as a competition and being counter-productive to sharing.

This point is important to me.. I am enjoying the camaraderie of this site, particularly the absence of "serious" competition; what we are experiencing here is mostly good photographic fun with the benefit of friendly and mostly expert comment on the way with no back-biting over rules of any kind. There are plenty of other places where the seriously competitive can find suitable opportunities.

- Leaving the commentary until after voting: But then most people will have moved on.

You're right there, Colin!! I'm flat out keeping up with a fraction of the action, not successfully, let alone diving into archives for more (anything more than about 36 hours ago is archival around here!)

Keep up the good work team , I luvvit!

roxy

[Roxy]

[QUOTE=Roxy;7894]This point is important to me.. I am enjoying the camaraderie of this site, particularly the absence of "serious" competition; what we are experiencing here is mostly good photographic fun with the benefit of friendly and mostly expert comment on the way with no back-biting over rules of any kind. There are plenty of other places where the seriously competitive can find suitable opportunities.


Reflecting on this made me think some readers may feel I'm degrading the activity on here. I want to add that we are also enjoying a great deal of excellent quality imagery while we have our fun!

roxy