Savannah

[Ziggy]

Critique would be appreciated on this one.

[Dave Humphries]

Interesting question Jim,

My first thought is that the colour temp looks too cool, I think this is the biggest single factor at play.

Further thoughts are that the areas of the image that are not the subject are sharpest and brightest - the cars and buildings.

There might be several contributory factors to this:
The shutter speed was 1/100s, so the dangling foliage may be suffering some subject movement blur - or their fine structure may just be beyond the resolving power of the lens and sensor.
The more contrasty edges of the buildings and cars have become sharpened more than the trees
The light and shade is what it is, so you can't get the subject to be brighter than the sunlit street

It looks like a nice place to be, I imagine not too noisy, cool in summer due to the shade.

I'm not sure what you could do at capture to try to improve the outcome though; it is a difficult subject, you need good DoF, f/4 was used, but it is a smallish sensor camera; a Panasonic DMC-FZ200, at 8.7mm, so you cannot isolate subject from background by use of aperture.

Tricky - it'll be interesting to see what others say.

Anyway, I hope that helps, Dave

[Manfred M]

Jim - I'll have to agree with Dave on his comments on the colour cast in this image. The tree bark should not have a bluish - purple look to it. The colour balance is certainly off. Unfortunately, there are no great places in the image to take a proper black and white reading, so I ended up eyeballing it. I re-calibrated and re-profiled my screens on Friday, so I'm quite confident about the colours.

[Shadowman]

I often take photos such as these just to experiment with DOF and shadows and tones. This scene is a mild example of dappled and can work usually when there is a good subject in the composition. I agree with Dave's comments about color temperature, the spots of grass lit by sunlight looks bleached out.

[IzzieK]

Jim...comparing the two using the arrow in Lytebox, I prefer Manfred's edit .

[Ziggy]

Thanks Izzie, John, Manfred and Dave for the feedback.

Will try another edit and see if I can get it to resemble Manfred's edit.

[Mike Buckley]

I would like to add to the other comments already made that the composition is wonderful. If the light had been so diffuse that it had caused the lawn to appear as one color or if the light had been less diffuse that it had caused the lawn to be more contrasty, this composition probably would not have worked nearly so well for me. But in this quality of light, it works really well.

[Ziggy]

I would like to add to the other comments already made that the composition is wonderful. If the light had been so diffuse that it had caused the lawn to appear as one color or if the light had been less diffuse that it had caused the lawn to be more contrasty, this composition probably would not have worked nearly so well for me. But in this quality of light, it works really well.

Thanks for the feedback Mike. I tried another edit. Any better?

[Mike Buckley]

Jim,

There is the row of trees that is sort of in the middle of the grassy area. Make note of the second tree and then look at the clump of moss in or near that tree about one-third down from the bottom of the frame. Paying attention to that moss, look at the image in the Lytebox and toggle back and forth between that image and the one before it. You'll see that you introduced a color cast in all of the moss throughout the scene and other areas as well, but especially that clump of moss as well as a couple of other clumps. That color cast eliminated the grey look of the moss.

The grey look of the moss is what you want to retain because all the moss in the physical scene appears relatively grey compared to the green color of the leaves. That's true even though the light is sometimes bounced around and filtered by the leaves. Even when that happens, the moss should be predominantly grey.

[Mike Buckley]

I see that your camera was released about three years ago and that you used Auto White Balance. My guess is that your camera's Auto White Balance is relatively effective. You might want to return to the original file straight out of the camera and take a look at the overall look with regard to white balance. There's a good chance that it will be just fine on its own with no need for modification with regard to white balance or color balance.

[Ziggy]

Thanks for the feedback Mike.

Think I'm going to bury this one at Bonaventure.

[Manfred M]

Jim - I have never been there, so can't judge what the true colours of the scene were. However, this latest version looks too green.

My preferred method is to get some readings off something I know to be neutral (no gray cards in this image), but I did drop a colour sampler on some of the tree pitch the arbourist applied to the tree (Point 1) after removing a branch as well as the tire of one of the cars on the left (Point 2). I would prefer to do this on significant element in the image as well as a white point, to help me make colour corrections, but I can't intuitively see anything that I can be sure is white.





If you look at both of these areas that should be close to place, the info panel shows an imbalance in the green channel. I could be wrong on the seal on the tree, but car tires are definitely black,

[Mike Buckley]

Think I'm going to bury this one at Bonaventure.

I would be happy to work on this image if you could provide a link that gives us access to a full-size image that is SOOC. That's because the image is too good to send to Bonaventure.