Gnarly Tree

[tbob]

I posted an image of this tree, What doesn't kill makes interesting Art expressed an interest in seeing other images of it so I oblige.

The same day I shot the first image I walked around the tree to shoot the entire trunk from various angles. Quite different as you circle the tree. The biggest problem was that the tree was only lit from one side and the sky was quite bright clouds. Made it difficult to not have the sky burnt out and the tree a dark silhouette. Decided to expose so sky was almost burnt out highlights, I felt I could recover the shadows reasonably.

[Artshot]

Thanks for the photos. I think you did a great job of bringing out the details in the tree. I kind of like the vertical shot with the glass for a background.

[xpatUSA]

I posted an image of this tree, What doesn't kill makes interesting Art expressed an interest in seeing other images of it so I oblige.

The same day I shot the first image I walked around the tree to shoot the entire trunk from various angles. Quite different as you circle the tree. The biggest problem was that the tree was only lit from one side and the sky was quite bright clouds. Made it difficult to not have the sky burnt out and the tree a dark silhouette. Decided to expose so sky was almost burnt out highlights, I felt I could recover the shadows reasonably.

Certainly an impressive tree, Trev.

I'm wondering about the camera settings because the tree is a little softer than I might expect from a D850, not that I've ever shot one.

In view of concern about DOF expressed in the other thread, why f/2.8 when shot at under 3m (EXIF distance)? For your settings, my infamous calculator says the DOF is about 300mm but the tree looks a bit fatter than that ...

In view of the sky's brightness, why shot at 2500 ISO and +2 EC? What am I missing, bearing in mind the way the images turned out so well-exposed?

[tbob]

Certainly an impressive tree, Trev.

I'm wondering about the camera settings because the tree is a little softer than I might expect from a D850, not that I've ever shot one.

In view of concern about DOF expressed in the other thread, why f/2.8 when shot at under 3m (EXIF distance)? For your settings, my infamous calculator says the DOF is about 300mm but the tree looks a bit fatter than that ...

In view of the sky's brightness, why shot at 2500 ISO and +2 EC? What am I missing, bearing in mind the way the images turned out so well-exposed?

I had to handhold the camera on a really quite dull day. Given the light, and that this is a very sketchy part of Vancouver, I wanted to be as quick as possible. Depth of field calculation is something I do by gut feeling not math , just set the focus point/exposure where I think it will work, do a test shot, lock it in if good and proceed. I probably could have been more accurate. However I did not feel like standing around with $4000 worth of camera gear in a decidedly high crime area.

[xpatUSA]

I had to handhold the camera on a really quite dull day. Given the light, and that this is a very sketchy part of Vancouver, I wanted to be as quick as possible. Depth of field calculation is something I do by gut feeling not math , just set the focus point/exposure where I think it will work, do a test shot, lock it in if good and proceed. I probably could have been more accurate. However I did not feel like standing around with $4000 worth of camera gear in a decidedly high crime area.

Understood, thanks for the clarification.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Wavelength]

Very colorful

[Rita]

It really is an impressive tree. I can totally understand why you wouldn't want to hang around with your gear in that area.

[Dave Humphries]

I'm wondering about the camera settings because the tree is a little softer than I might expect from a D850, not that I've ever shot one.

As a general response, not aimed at Ted particularly

There are a couple of possible reasons for this;
a) I don't believe the photo was downsized (and sharpened for the size we are now seeing) before upload, therefore TinyPic has downsized it to 1599 pixels on longest edge
b) because it is portrait (vertical) orientation, unless viewed on a monitor with same orientation (and sufficient resolution), the browser is also downsizing it so the compositional height fits the viewers screen

When viewing these in LyteBox; if you hit the "F" key and view the image pixels at 1:1 with your monitor pixels, it seems OK to me, but you'll then need to scroll up/down to see it all.

That's why (for on-line display) I recommend downsizing to a size which is about 1000 pixels in image height regardless of image orientation, so most* will see it on their landscape/horizontally oriented monitors at a resolution that has had the correct output sharpening applied and be able to enjoy the entire composition. Of course there will be occasions when we want to do both, but separately, panoramas immediately come to mind. I like to see the whole vista, then go 1:1 and study in detail.

* perhaps at some point in the future, 'most' of us will use tablets and simply rotate them so the image flips and the 1600 or so pixels can be accommodated whatever the compositional orientation

Web image display is a tricky topic, there are so many other things that both viewers and image posters might (even inadvertently) do that can seriously compromise the quality they see, especially when 'technology' often automatically does things we may not be aware of, no matter how expensive the camera was.

[xpatUSA]

As a general response, not aimed at Ted particularly

There are a couple of possible reasons for this;
a) I don't believe the photo was downsized (and sharpened for the size we are now seeing) before upload, therefore TinyPic has downsized it to 1599 pixels on longest edge
b) because it is portrait (vertical) orientation, unless viewed on a monitor with same orientation (and sufficient resolution), the browser is also downsizing it so the compositional height fits the viewers screen

When viewing these in LyteBox; if you hit the "F" key and view the image pixels at 1:1 with your monitor pixels, it seems OK to me, but you'll then need to scroll up/down to see it all.

That's why (for on-line display) I recommend downsizing to a size which is about 1000 pixels in image height regardless of image orientation, so most* will see it on their landscape/horizontally oriented monitors at a resolution that has had the correct output sharpening applied and be able to enjoy the entire composition. Of course there will be occasions when we want to do both, but separately, panoramas immediately come to mind. I like to see the whole vista, then go 1:1 and study in detail.

* perhaps at some point in the future, 'most' of us will use tablets and simply rotate them so the image flips and the 1600 or so pixels can be accommodated whatever the compositional orientation

Web image display is a tricky topic, there are so many other things that both viewers and image posters might (even inadvertently) do that can seriously compromise the quality they see, especially when 'technology' often automatically does things we may not be aware of, no matter how expensive the camera was.

Excellent post, Dave!

I didn't know about the 'F' key shortcut, thanks for that. (I had used the 'full screen' arrow at the bottom of the LyteBox display).

In spite of my earlier comment about softness in a posted image, I am a passionate devotee of ensuring that posted images are viewable at the same resolution as I created them. Thanks for the reminder ... I have been a bit lax of late.

[Polar01]

Trevor you have to love wet trees, the colours are much better than if they are dry, same as wet rocks. I have been known to splash water on dry rocks as they look better wet same as your tree. I always say, wet rocks rock, now I can add trees.

Cheers: Allan

[xpatUSA]

That's why (for on-line display) I recommend downsizing to a size which is about 1000 pixels in image height regardless of image orientation, so most* will see it on their landscape/horizontally oriented monitors at a resolution that has had the correct output sharpening applied and be able to enjoy the entire composition.

Thanks again for the advice. I gave it a try, resizing a 2640x1760px image to 1080px tall and applying an overdose of "output sharpening" :-



The sharpness should be plainly visible in the deciduous tree branches to the right of the power-pole. Many of the branches should have the "jaggies" on your screen, due to my deliberately heavy-handed sharpening.

P.S. Looking at the antics of LyteBox for the above 1080px tall image, it seems to me that Dave's suggestion of 1000px is better, because my image still looks soft to me, even when I resize the CiC page to 100% in my browser (FireFox)!

And, when I click on the 'F' key, the posted image expands to way bigger than my screen, so summat's up somewhere with that.

P.P.S. Comments about color are not invited - the shot was taken with a camera configured for full/spectrum/IR with a fairly wide-band lens-mounted UV/IR blocking filter that passes some near-IR (Schott BG38). Hence the pink sky and the veiling flare perhaps ...