fall vista

[DanK]

I'm posting this both for criticism and to illustrate the traveling-camera dilemma in another post.

I went for a hike several weeks ago, when I wasn't allowed to bear any weight on my left arm because of surgery. I took my little Lumix LX-100 (first generation), which is so small and light that it's easy to use with one hand. However, it is only 12 MP, and more important in this case, it maxes out at 70mm FF equivalent.

This image is therefore a crop down to 5.4 MP.

As for the content: I find editing overcast-day images of this sort very difficult, so I would welcome any comments. The editing was mostly tonality, using a luminosity blend mode in some cases to avoid oversaturation, and reducing saturation in some areas. I think parts are still oversaturated.

I'll post the original with no edits below it, as rendered by Lightroom.

[Geoff F]

Your edit works for me. The basic image looks a bit flat but that all changes with the full Lightbox view where the colours and saturation/contrast become more apparent.

Good focus depth. Bright but nothing over exposed. Well focused.

Dull light days are usually difficult. What I often do is to slightly over expose but take a few bracketed exposure shots which I hand merge with masks. Often just using two shots; one for the midtones/foreground and one for the sky etc.

[BrianA61]

The uncropped original is very nicely composed, clear and evenly exposed. I'm assuming this is a raw file given the overall bland/muddy appearence? Your edit is much better cropped but I see where only being a 12MP sensor can degrade when trying to zoom digitally.

I see what you mean with the travel camera vs more DSLR quality. I have been looking at the newer versions of the LX-100 and find it more acceptable wrt to resolution. However, I also rethought my original idea of strictly going with a small footprint camera for everything. I think I will lean more toward the travel camera IN ADDITION TO my "good" cameras. I guess each have their own place and you can't have a 'one size fits all' attitude about serious photography.

[DanK]

Thanks for the comments.

Yes, the bottom is raw, rendered with Lightroom defaults.

You can readily see one problem: much of the frame is devoted to stuff I didn't want--the huge expanse of lawn and the featureless gray sky. However, I did want the horizontal expanse. With all of my FF equipment, I probably would have stitched together a few shots at 200 mm. Or I could have shot like this. With a 3:2 aspect ratio and 32 rather than 12 MPX, I probably would have been fine with the crop.

The bigger problem is the drabness. Geoff, what I do parallels what you do, but I only use one shot, as apart from the sky, the image takes up only a small part of the dynamic range of the sensor. I just use a lot of local tonality adjustments to the same end.

This sort of scene is one where I find Photoshop indispensable. The contrast is so low that increasing it enough in LR/ACR or with a normal blend in Photoshop makes for garishly oversaturated images. The alternative is a luminosity blend for some of the adjustments, or working in L*a*b mode. I find the former much easier, and it makes it simple to go back and forth between normal and luminosity as you're working.