Another Patagonia - C&C please

[davidedric]

Hi,

Found the feedback on my last Patagonia picture very helpful. Here's one more - and would be grateful for C&C. I'm not planning any more I should; have the hang of it by now!

Dave

[Dave Humphries]

Found the feedback on my last Patagonia picture very helpful. Here's one more - and would be grateful for C&C.

Hi Dave,

I haven't seen the other one, so forgive me if I get things wrong here or tell you stuff that's beyond your control now.

You're no newbie and I'll assume you'd like critical comment on this as presented, so ...

The biggest issue I see when viewing this can be summed up in two words; "jpg artefacts".

When viewed at 100% (1,200px × 775px), I see:
a fairly blocky/noisy blue sky
odd pattern repetitions in the sky adjacent to the mountain edges, particularly where they change direction
I think there is also posterisation occurring in the mid and darker tones, although this isn't apparent in the histogram

Of course, if this is a reprocessing of an old jpg capture from years ago, the above, while accurate, ain't much help to you now (sorry)

What else?
The composition is quite nice, although I am left wishing to see a little more of the lake and land in foreground.
oh dear, you can't change that now I suspect either.

Hope that helps (but somehow I doubt it) - perhaps it'll help others,

[davidedric]

Thanks, Dave, much appreciated.

It is indeed a reworking of an old jpeg. I can also see some of the artefacts you point out. My first post was to ask if these images are worth working on. I think I have my answer!

I take no offence at all with your feedback. I hope it helps illustrate how much more can be achieved with today's equipment. I actually have similar images shot on slide film with Ektachrome 200 or 400, they are even noisier.

Cheers, Dave

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Dave,

I tried Neat Image on it, with mixed results;
It was good at cleaning the blocky/noisey blue sky.
I was disappointed the jpg artefact removal didn't achieve more, but perhaps I was expecting too much
The noise reduction looked ok on the grey mountain tones, but made the green foreground even more posterised.

I guess at 400%, you could clone out the jpg artefacts in the sky, but it would take a while

It does indeed show the advances in kit; less noise and more MP (for finer noise) - and benefits of RAW processing.

Cheers,

[TonyW]

I'm looking at this on my iPad and can't see the JPEG artefacts without trying hard. Perhaps a little bit more foreground would be nice but it shows the mountains nicely. I like the colours much better here than on your original picture and they look much more like what I remember seeing. The bands of colours are such a strong feature those mountains.

My trip to Patagonia was one of the highlights of my life and I could look at pictures of these places forever.