Project 52 - Q3 - David (Rufus)

[Rufus]

I am always astounded at how crisp are other people’s photographs compared to mine; so, for the third quarter this year I shall try to improve the sharpness of my photographs and attain a depth of field appropriate for their subject matter.

I shall start off this quarter with images taken at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. It was designed by Prince Albert and Thomas Cubitt in the Italian Renaissance style. It was regularly used by Queen Victoria and the family as a summer country residence for family holidays. Victoria’s successor, Edward VII did not need it and no other member of the royal family wanted to take on the upkeep of Osborne, so on Coronation Day 1902 the king gave the estate to the nation.

Although part of the ground floor of the house was opened to the public in 1904, it was not until the second half of the 20th century that many rooms were unsealed and restored.

Its elevations have a strong sandy colour which is reflected in gravel paths and the balustrading.

All were hand held shots taken with the EF 24-105mm lens.

Week 27 # 63 – Osborne House Exterior 1 (1/250 sec at f/8 and ISO 100; focal length set at 41mm):


Week 27 # 64 – Osborne House Exterior 2 (1/180 sec at f/11 and ISO 100; focal length set at 24mm):


Week 27 # 65 – Osborne House Exterior 3 (1/250 sec at f/8 and ISO 100; focal length set at 93mm):


Week 27 # 66 – Osborne House Interior (1/125 sec at f/4.5 and ISO 6400; focal length set at 35mm):


Week 27 # 67 – Osborne House Gardens (1/180 sec at f/11 and ISO 100; focal length set at 24mm):



C&C will be very welcome.

My Project 52 Q2 thread is here

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts, what did you do differently with this series of images over those presented n the past and do you think it brought you closer to your goal?

[Wavelength]

Very nice set of images

[Rufus]

..what did you do differently with this series of images over those presented in the past and do you think it brought you closer to your goal?

That is actually a challenging question, John. Mainly what I did was to consciously decide the settings in order to give myself the best chance of a sharp handheld capture.

For the exterior shots:

- I used the spot focus to get an accurate focus (and recomposed if necessary), although I imagine that for longer distance shots like these that is less essential. For the garden shot I focused on the statue in the centre of the fountain.
- I selected f/8 to f/11 to avoid the more extreme ends of the aperture range (wide open is f/4).
- I selected 1/180 or 1/250 sec to avoid camera shake.
- It was a bright day so I could keep the ISO down to 100.

For the interior shot:
- I wanted to ensure that the shutter speed could not impact on the sharpness. I selected 1/125 sec as a safe option when the zoom was at its widest (24mm).
- I wanted to keep the ISO low to reduce grain (say 800), but ended up with 6400, a 3-stop compromise.
- I opened up the lens to f/4.5 (not quite all the way) to avoid an even higher ISO on the basis that the main subject (painting, doors and furniture) was almost in a single plane. I decided the DOF should not be an issue.

In post processing all of the images I used the new texture slider. It seems possible to be fairly aggressive with that one, but maybe I have overdone it. It will be interesting to hear people’s thoughts on that.

It now occurs to me that I did not use noise reduction when processing the interior shot.

Does this constitute doing anything differently? I am not sure; because they are all things I have been aware of in the past. But as I try to think like a photographer, I am trying to do so by making a conscious effort. Then in the future it may become more instinctive.

[Manfred M]

A nice series David. You've taken care of any perspective distortion quite nicely and that is definitely something that needs to be done in a series like this. There seem to have been enough clouds around to take the edge off the sunlight in most of the shots.

The interior shot works reasonably well and the only part that is not working for me are the lamps at the front of the room. They are just a bit too hot and draw too much attention. My preferred technique for that situation is to use the autobracket function and to get a shot with the lights dimmer. As long as I don't change the focal length, I can usually handhold well enough that I can line up the shots in separate layers and merge that part of the image together. I find that burning down does not generally work as the lights tend to go gray and textureless and that generally does not look good.

[Rufus]

A nice series David. You've taken care of any perspective distortion quite nicely and that is definitely something that needs to be done in a series like this. There seem to have been enough clouds around to take the edge off the sunlight in most of the shots.

I am glad the work on the perspective distortion has been reasonably successful.

The interior shot works reasonably well and the only part that is not working for me are the lamps at the front of the room. They are just a bit too hot and draw too much attention. My preferred technique for that situation is to use the autobracket function and to get a shot with the lights dimmer. As long as I don't change the focal length, I can usually handhold well enough that I can line up the shots in separate layers and merge that part of the image together. I find that burning down does not generally work as the lights tend to go gray and textureless and that generally does not look good.

Yes the lights by the painting are too bright even though no clipping occurs. I have not yet got into the mindset of bracketing images unless I set out with that intention. Maybe that's a topic for the 4th quarter. I took some test shots to assess the exposure for this interior image and then waited quite a while to get one with no people in it. To bracket I would only have required another shot with no-one obscuring those lights.

[Rufus]

Very nice set of images

Thank you, Nandakumar.

[Manfred M]

Yes the lights by the painting are too bright even though no clipping occurs. I have not yet got into the mindset of bracketing images unless I set out with that intention. Maybe that's a topic for the 4th quarter. I took some test shots to assess the exposure for this interior image and then waited quite a while to get one with no people in it. To bracket I would only have required another shot with no-one obscuring those lights.

There are some techniques for dealing with the people issue too.

1. Shoot ultra-wide angle and just get in front of everyone; and

2. Get a series of shots, stack them in Photoshop and as long as you have enough exposures that can be aligned and you have coverage without people in different parts of the image, you can just paint them out with a mask by letting the parts with no people through. There is even a way of automating it using the Calculations function in the Image tab. I haven't used that is a few years now, so I can't remember exactly how to use it, but it was extremely effective.

[Rufus]

There are some techniques for dealing with the people issue too.

1. Shoot ultra-wide angle and just get in front of everyone;

Except they were coming through the door on the camera right and circuating in front of the picture and along the side on the camera left!

2. Get a series of shots, stack them in Photoshop and as long as you have enough exposures that can be aligned and you have coverage without people in different parts of the image, you can just paint them out with a mask by letting the parts with no people through.

That sounds like what I had in mind had I taken a second image: a manual painting in of the lights while omitting any people that strayed into that second image.

[Manfred M]

That sounds like what I had in mind had I taken a second image: a manual painting in of the lights while omitting any people that strayed into that second image.

A simplified example shown here:

Here is the finished product with no person visible. You can see a layer mask where I painted out the person with a layer mask.

[Rufus]

A simplified example shown here:
Here is the finished product with no person visible. You can see a layer mask where I painted out the person with a layer mask.

Although I use layers and masks I do not always find them intuitive to use.

I have tried my method on two of my files: an original with a notice on the top lower layer, and one where I had cloned out the notice on the lower layer. I have used a black mask to conceal the notice board on the top layer. When both layers are visible the cloned steps on the lower layer are seen and the notice board does not appear. Objective achieved. The main image of course is a closeup of the steps where the notice was.



However, I notice that you have the unwanted person on the lower layer whereas I have the unwanted notice on the top layer. We have both painted with black on a white mask. How come both methods work? Your layers:

[Manfred M]

However, I notice that you have the unwanted person on the lower layer whereas I have the unwanted notice on the top layer. We have both painted with black on a white mask. How come both methods work? Your layers:

It's hard to make out from the thumbnails, but there is an unwanted person in both pictures. The key point is that he is not in the same place, so I can merge the two images so that the unwanted person disappears..

Image 1





Image 2





I shot with a tripod, but have done the same thing handheld. I remember doing one shot where I removed ~ 10 people with this technique.

[Rufus]

It's hard to make out from the thumbnails, but there is an unwanted person in both pictures. The key point is that he is not in the same place, so I can merge the two images so that the unwanted person disappears.

Oh, I had not seen observed two unwanted persons, and had associated the black painted area with the wrong person. It all makes sense now!

[Rufus]

Happily, the images for this week were processed and saved ready to post before my computer packed up. I shall post week 29 to this thread when it has been repaired and I have restored all my data and apps.

Meanwhile in week 28 I shot some flowers. Although they were handheld my main objective was to nevertheless achieve crisp images of the flowers in line with my objective for Quarter 3.

The zoom was set to a focal length of 105mm so that the flower filled the frame as much as possible.

I wanted a shallow depth of field so that the images would be all about the flowers not the background foliage. I could crop them more to achieve this but for this quarter’s project it seemed worthwhile posting more rather than less of the image.

I did not want to use the lens wide open at f/4 as it is likely to be sharpest around f/5.6 to f/8.

The lens stabilisation was on but I still wanted to keep the time no longer than 1/125 second to mitigate camera shake.

After taking the above into account I was able to keep the ISO at 100 or 200 which I was happy with.

I focused, using spot focusing, on the edge of petals near the centre of the flower and then recomposed the shot. I did this in order to be focusing at an edge with some contrast, but would the camera be expected to detect such an edge when the petals are very similar colours?

When post processing I used the texture slider in Photoshop to bring out the edges of petals and the centre of the flowers.

Should I have done things differently in order to achieve sharp images?

Week 28 # 68 – Water Lilly (1/125 sec at f/9.5 and ISO 100; focal length set at 105mm):


Week 28 # 69 – Red Rose (1/125 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 200; focal length set at 105mm):


Week 28 # 70 – Pale Cream Rose (1/250 sec at f/6.7 and ISO 100; focal length set at 105mm):


Week 28 # 71 – Pale Yellow Rose (1/750 sec at f/6.7 and ISO 100; focal length set at 105mm):


Week 28 # 72 – Pale Pink Rose (1/180 sec at f/4.5 and ISO 100; focal length set at 105mm):

[Wavelength]

A nice set some lovely flowers....sharp enough to please,but not harsh to disturb

[Geoff F]

Flower portraits are surprisingly difficult subjects, David. I spend a lot of time in preparation of choosing the best camera angles and tidying up potential background problems before even considering pressing the shutter.

Sometimes, full sun causes exposure problems so I have to add a bit of shade such as positioning my body to create light shadow. Keeping the aperture fairly open can help to avoid backgrounds but it often requires some focus stacking, which really needs a tripod; although it is worth trying hand held if you manually focus.

For me, the Water Lily works fine.

You have a bit of over exposure on part of the petals in the Red Rose image. This is often impossible to avoid in bright sunshine.

The Pale Cream Rose is another difficult subject but you have avoided any exposure issues with this image. Although, personally I would have removed that small dead petal in the bottom left corner before shooting. Alternatively, can it be cloned out?

The Pale Yellow Rose has harsh sunshine problems and a background bright flower in the top right corner. I suspect this is one of those scenes which I would have simply walked past because of all the potential issues.

The Pale Pink Rose is in more subdued light and your exposure has worked fine this time.

[Rufus]

Flower portraits are surprisingly difficult subjects, David. I spend a lot of time in preparation of choosing the best camera angles and tidying up potential background problems before even considering pressing the shutter.

Sometimes, full sun causes exposure problems so I have to add a bit of shade such as positioning my body to create light shadow. Keeping the aperture fairly open can help to avoid backgrounds but it often requires some focus stacking, which really needs a tripod; although it is worth trying hand held if you manually focus.

For me, the Water Lily works fine.

You have a bit of over exposure on part of the petals in the Red Rose image. This is often impossible to avoid in bright sunshine.

The Pale Cream Rose is another difficult subject but you have avoided any exposure issues with this image. Although, personally I would have removed that small dead petal in the bottom left corner before shooting. Alternatively, can it be cloned out?

The Pale Yellow Rose has harsh sunshine problems and a background bright flower in the top right corner. I suspect this is one of those scenes which I would have simply walked past because of all the potential issues.

The Pale Pink Rose is in more subdued light and your exposure has worked fine this time.

Thank you for some helpful comments, Geoff. They were all very pertinent, as I am sure I shall take some more flowers during this quarter.

I did some cropping and cloning, but I did not pay a huge amount of attention to that this time or the extraneous items in the original composition. For example I cloned away some insects on the Water Lilly. and a bright area at the top right of the Pale Yellow Rose. I now see that the latter is very poorly done. These, however, were secondary to my main objective of getting the main subjects sharp.

Yes I shall have to try focus stacking, and I now have a lighter tripod which will help.

As for sharpness in general, yesterday I took a look at the tutorials here on CiC. My first reading suggests that I have taken on board some of the principles at point of capture but I had not understood the unsharp mask sharpening tool even though I have used it on a trial and error basis for quite a time. So I shall study those tutorials more closely and revisit some notes I have on clarity vs contrast. That, then, is my present plan.

[joebranko]

I particularly liked the pale pink rose. The edges of the oetals are very sharp and you have captured the delicacy of the rose.

[Rufus]

I particularly liked the pale pink rose. The edges of the petals are very sharp and you have captured the delicacy of the rose.

Thank you for commenting, Joe. I also felt the rose's delicacy had been captured, but I was less enamoured with the large near-white area on one petal which I did not notice at the time of taking the picture.

[Rufus]

Week 29

I am hoping my IT problems are behind me now, but it did not leave much time for photography.

On Tuesday our local camera club went to a small village on the River Hamble. The late sun was behind us.

I concentrated primarily on achieving a suitably sharp image. Mostly I used a tripod, but this shot was handheld resting on railings to reduce any camera shake.

I felt that f/8 would give a good depth of field and 1/350 sec plus a solid railing to rest on should adequately freeze the gentle movement in the yachts and water although it would not be fast enough to freeze rigging if it was vibrating. The ISO was therefore an acceptable 200.

In post I have only used global adjustments in the basic Lightroom panel (including some clarity, a little dehaze and vibrancy) and a graduated filter to slightly darken the sky.

I have not had the time to do more than this, but this quarter is primarily about getting a crisp image or avoiding a soft one. On my screen I appear to have been successful, but it remains to be seen what you will think! Iit is still a shame about the dark furled sail to the right of centre.

Week 29 # 73 – All moored up for a calm evening (1/350 sec at f/8 and ISO 200; focal length set at 31 mm):