King's Chapel - Boston

[Manfred M]

I took a number of architectural shots during our short trip to the Boston area. End of June meant that we were getting into high season, so getting shots without hordes of people standing in all the wrong places for a good shot was challenging.

One of my favourite techniques is to shoot with an ultra-wide angle lens; in this case the Nikkor f/2.8 14-24mm; at a focal length of 14mm. The shot shows the "typical" distortion one gets at the edges when shooting ultra wide. While I was close to having the camera level, I wasn't perfect, so I've tweaked the horizontal and vertical lines in post. The other main issue with the shot was the mixed lighting; compact fluorescent interior light was mixing with the daylight coming through the windows. I white balanced, based on the interior light, which meant a high level of blue when the daylight struck and I did manage to clean that up reasonably well.

The other issue with the image is the glare on the gold on black Lord's Prayer, from the back door of the church being open. Most of the glare reduction techniques I would normally use here would not work because it would obliterate the writing (I'm definitely open to suggestions), so I tried the new dehaze filter and while not 100% successful, by applying it twice in Photoshop and using a layer mask to apply it selectively, it reduced the "lighter" glare.

[bnnrcn]

Very neat shot, well done to the dehaze slider

[Shadowman]

Very nice.

[Mike Buckley]

You did a marvelous job adjusting the color balance. The lighting throughout the scene appears very natural to me. I mention this because I've done the same sort of thing and it's not easy.

As for the glare, using a polarizer might have worked without affecting the gold lettering, as the black area seems to be producing the glare more than the gold area.

The one sure way of solving the issue is to extremely painstakingly paint the black area using a color selected from an area that has no glare. If the gold letters are also producing the glare, do the same to fix that area. I've done it in areas involving text but never such a large area with so much text. Frankly, I wouldn't take the time to do that on this image because it would take one heck of a lot of time.

[Manfred M]

You did a marvelous job adjusting the color balance. The lighting throughout the scene appears very natural to me. I mention this because I've done the same sort of thing and it's not easy.

Thanks - and you are correct, doing this was not trivial and it took a fair bit of time.

As for the glare, using a polarizer might have worked without affecting the gold lettering, as the black area seems to be producing the glare more than the gold area.

Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of the Nikkor f/2.8 14-24mm lens is that it does not take any filters, so while I had my polarizers in the camera bag, this was not an option for this shot. The Nikkor f/2.8 24-70mm was not wide enough to get the shot that I wanted.

The one sure way of solving the issue is to extremely painstakingly paint the black area using a color selected from an area that has no glare. If the gold letters are also producing the glare, do the same to fix that area. I've done it in areas involving text but never such a large area with so much text. Frankly, I wouldn't take the time to do that on this image because it would take one heck of a lot of time.

That was my conclusion too.

[Mike Buckley]

Do you have a polarizer that is large enough that it can be handheld in front of the lens?

[Manfred M]

Do you have a polarizer that is large enough that it can be handheld in front of the lens?

Yes, I have one (105mm).

The problem is that the lens has a permanent (non-removable) lens hood, and while the polarizer fits nicely over the hood, the vignetting is really quite extreme.





View of lens at 14mm focal length





Lens with 105mm filter sitting on it. The clearance between the filter and the top of the lens element is around 2-1/2 or 3mm.

[Mike Buckley]

That non-removable lens hood really is a problem and I have to wonder about its net benefit. My Tokina 12-24 zoom has a removable hood and it takes a thin 77mm polarizer with no vignetting at the shortest focal length. That filter is so thin that it doesn't accept a lens cap, but that's a reasonable tradeoff in my opinion.

[Manfred M]

Not really Mike. The issue is the lens design itself the large round front element of the lens the comes almost to the edge of the lens hood, that you see in the first image of the lens. It really protrudes quite some way from the main body of the lens; so the built-in hood really performs a similar function as the body does on most lenses.

The non-removable hood is the only protection that the outermost lens element gets. At the 14mm focal length it comes within 2 or 3 mm of the outer edge of the lens hood; and unlike some other lenses I own there is no vignetting with this hood.. It's a $2000US lens, so I really don't want to scratch the front element.


http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...r_14_24mm.html