Nature/Nurture: ginger here
Equipment/Photographer, which is it? I left these low contrast as it is very hazy here, right now it is raining. I took these earlier today with my new lens the Canon 400L f5.6.
Personally, I think the right equipment helps a lot. Plus a learning curve. But there is no beating equipment when one is ready to use it.
Comments?? What do you think? I know I could not have gotten these shots w the 300, and I have no idea why. That is not that much difference in equipment. These were taken afternoon, so they were hand held. The air was not too hot, but it was heavy with moisture.
I have not put the exif in, as I am not sure if the ISO was on 400 or 800. I do know that I upped the f stop to f8, to focus on the shoulder and still get the eye to appear in focus. That concerned me. When I was shooting more than one, I did change it even higher to f10, at one point.
ginger
Personally, I think the right equipment helps a lot. Plus a learning curve. But there is no beating equipment when one is ready to use it.
Comments?? What do you think? I know I could not have gotten these shots w the 300, and I have no idea why. That is not that much difference in equipment. These were taken afternoon, so they were hand held. The air was not too hot, but it was heavy with moisture.
I have not put the exif in, as I am not sure if the ISO was on 400 or 800. I do know that I upped the f stop to f8, to focus on the shoulder and still get the eye to appear in focus. That concerned me. When I was shooting more than one, I did change it even higher to f10, at one point.
ginger
After all is said and done, it is the sweet tea.
0
Comments
These are your best yet with your new lens. I like the group flight shot best. Since you had multiple subjects in most of the shots f8 and/or f10 were pretty good choices (I may have stepped it down to f/11 or f/13 for the group flight shot).
One way to get some of the haze out of your shots is with local contrast enhancement. You use the USM tool in PS, set the amount to a value between 20-40, the radius to 50-60, and the threshold to 0. I apply this to just about all of my shots. It will make a subtle but noticeable difference. Here's a link to an article on it http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml
http://behret.smugmug.com/ NANPA member
How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
that new lens is starting to work for you.....
My Galleries
Flicker
G+
On these shots, so much white on white, etc, I was going after a soft effect. But this might be soft as well, just less hazy. I will try it.
I turned off all sharpening in RAW, used the USM, then I used Neat Ninja to deal w noise. I have been doing that lately. I have read both ways. And on this dGrin, I have been told both ways, or at least not to use the RAW sharpening and to then run it through NN.
I don't know what effect that would have on this other way of dealing w the haze. I live with it, like it, when it is there. Also like a nice clear day. We had many more of those last summer.
Do you sharpen in RAW at all, do you turn them to zero, as I did?
ginger (These were very easy to work up, I did them all about the same without doing much. On the curves, I went the opposite way and decreased the contrast. Do you ever do that?)
I do 95% of my post processing for my wildlife shots in Nikon Capture. I have all of my in-camera's processing settings set to off or zero. I open the RAW file, I apply sharpening to the shot in Capture, adjust the exposure, correct the wb if necessary, usually by setting a grey point. Sometimes I will apply Nikon's D-light tool (Nikon's version of PS shadows/highlight tool). I will then adjust the color saturation and contrast. It then goes to PS where I crop, apply local contrast enhancement and then possibly some curves work. If the background is nosiy I will select it with the wand tool and apply noise reduction to it. I will almost never apply NR to the main subject. If the main subject is noisy that means I blew the exposure and I will cull the shot before I lose detail to NR. I shoot around 95% of my shots at ISO 200-500. If i have to go above 500 it means I've lost the light and I will usually close down at that point unless I have a bald eagle doing the macarena or something equally groovy.
http://behret.smugmug.com/ NANPA member
How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
BMP
"Osprey Whisperer"
OspreyWhisperer.com