Photos Photo of the Day

Palace of Fine Arts at Dusk by Ligoman17, on Flickr

This is an image of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco taken last summer. I've been messing around with it lately as I try to learn how to make a decent HDR image (an oxymoron, right? ). The intent was to compress the dynamic range from 8 bracketed exposures into one while maintaining a gradient that looked realistic. To that end, I'm fairly happy with the result save for the green artifacts in the water reflections. Any idea what might cause it? There's no green cast in any of the bracketed exposures. I used Photoshop CS5's built-in HDR function.

On the front end... I shot this series with a Canon 500D and 17-40 f4L lens. The final product is cropped to an aspect ratio of 1:2, per my original vision. We had a high fog that night, and the sky was a flat, dull blue-gray color. To break up that monotony I clipped the top of the dome; creating two sky spaces. I figured most people know what a dome looks like, and it seemed like a great way to get rid of unwanted negative space. Would love to hear peoples' thoughts on this. Does it work?

Cheers,

Dan

 

That's a nice one Ligoman.

As for the composition I don't think cropping the dome this little works. From my experience & what I've learned with curves & composition, you either go for it and show it's intentional or leave some space. If it's too close to the edge as it is now, it seems unintentional; which is not good.

But you might be right, is it a pain to post two more crops? with the sky open more and/or with the dome cropped more?

Mine for today:


To the roof! by Neo - nimajus, on Flickr


A sexy Silhouette by Neo - nimajus, on Flickr

 

Ligoman - I am a big fan of the 2x1 aspect ratio, but in this case I don't think it quite works. The dome has enough breathing space and the clipping gives the eye an area in the frame where it can easily escape... if I hadn't read your explanation, I'd be sitting wondering 'why has he clipped the top of the dome?' as I look around the image. Nice work on the processing though - looks very natural, although I'm not sure 8 exposures would've been needed?

 

Ligoman - I love the HDR work in that picture (didn't notice the green till you mentioned it) but the dome definitely does not work for me cropped.

The aspect ratio is nice, though. Looks better than 3:2 or 4:5 might, IMO

 

As others have said, I wish I could see the top of the dome. Sure, we all know what a dome looks like, but we may not know what that particular dome looks like as part of the overall architectural structure.

That said, what I find really interesting about that scene are the reflections on the ground. I wish we could see a vertical crop of just the gazebo with all of the reflected lines in the water.

 

Some shots with the 105 Micro AI-S & D700;

 

Love that last one.

 

Yep, the last one is great.

 

ZD Motor Sports Lamborghini Murciélago by angad84, on Flickr


Ferrari California by angad84, on Flickr

The second shot is why I love the 50m f/1.4 - bokehlicious. I just wish it was sharp at f/1.4 because it's virtually useless at that aperture for anything except portraits (I find the softness is nice for skin/blemishes etc).

 

My 50 1.8 is tack sharp wide open as is my 35 f2D, you check for front/back focus?

 

Yes, I did. Even manual-focused on a tripod with live view will not get it nearly as sharp as the 70-200, which is a bit effing silly. Still, I knew that (and purple fringing) would be a problem when I bought it - I wanted it for the low-light shooting that I often do and portraiture. I'll happily trade sharpness for f/1.4 when my next fastest lens is f/2.8 and my camera will only give acceptable shots up to ISO 1600.

The only awesome non-L prime Canon makes (as far as I can recall off the top of my head) is the 85mm f/1.8. Everything else either has dodgy AF or dodgy image quality.

But, as I said, I don't regret getting the 1.4 at all, because I knew exactly what I was getting into.

 

You can't really compare the sharpness of a f2.8 lens to a f1.4 lens wide open. :/

 

Wait, which one are you saying should be sharper?

I've been lucky enough to use a wide variety of lenses and almost without exception, primes are sharper than zooms. The Tamron 17-50 isn't known for being razor sharp but at f/2.8 it is sharper than the fifty at f/1.4. At f/1.8-f/2 the fifty will demolish the Tamron, so that's a win, but just for comparison's sake, the 85mm is sharper wide open than the 50mm at f/1.4 or at f/1.8.

I was waiting for Canon to update the 50 f/1.4 to the same spec as the 85mm f/1.8 (ring USM, internal focusing, razor sharp wide open) but then I got tired of waiting and just got it. Not sure whether it was smarter to settle for accurate, quick AF but soft wide open (with the canon) versus sharp wide open with dodgy AF (with the Sigma 50 f/1.4).

 

IMGP8047 by silverfish51, on Flickr

Soo, are we breaking out our 50mm 1.4 primes? If so, Pentax FA 50mm 1.4 doin' a landscape, although f11 so I guess it totally doesn't count.




Godrevy_Lighthouse_Dusk_Pano by silverfish51, on Flickr

Also, Godrevy Lighthouse with another under-used lens, the Pentax DA 50-200mm.

 

The zoom of course. The fringing etc should be a LOT worse on a large eperture prime, than f2.8 wide open on a zoom. No, primes are not sharper than zooms. They are sharper than zooms at equivalent f stops. So at f2.8 the f2 prime will be sharper than the zoom was wide open (f2.8). See what I mean? I'd rather go for more accurate AF, and not that great wide open. As for soft, the thing is, what's the point in having a f1.4 lens if you can't use it wide open because of poor performance?

 

Thanks everyone for your honest feedback.

Tim - My goal was to get the trees (the darkest features of the shot that needed detail) into about zone II and the reliefs above the columns (the lightest features of the shot that needed detail) into about zone VIII. It took 8 shots to make that happen in 1 f-stop increments. You're right, I probably don't need that many exposures in the middle; but CF cards are cheap...

Supermonkey - I actually did play around with a vertical comp like you suggested. The reflections looked really cool at exposures greater than a few seconds. I'll get around to processing that comp eventually. One of the RAWs is attached below to give you an idea.

Uncropped horizontal and unprocessed vertical:


Palace of Fine Arts Example #1 by Ligoman17, on Flickr


Palace of Fine Arts Example #2 by Ligoman17, on Flickr

 

It totally does count Great shots.

With respect, I must disagree. This is the first prime I've used that doesn't decimate my Tammy wide open. The 85 f/1.8 and 35 f/2 are both sharper at their widest apertures than the Tamron is. I'm not even bringing up the L primes because, well, that's sort of taken for granted.

As for soft - what's the alternative? Play ping-pong with Sigma to sort out their lens? The more I read about the Sigma 50 1.4, the more convinced I become that the Canon was still the right choice.

Now we're talking.

Re: the vertical, did you not get one with the entire reflection in the frame?

 

That's because your tammy is soft wide open. Before the Nikon 24-70, I had an ex display model Nikon 18-70DX lens. When I compared shots wide open (f3.5-f4.5 vs f2.8) to my 24-70, I realised the 18-70 must either have been a real dud , the 24-70 was just that much better. I'll post a new thread with some comparison shots at a later date. Suffice to say, the tamron will be soft wide open, so your primes will look that much better. Another thing, is that primes are more prone to CA etc, so the 24-70 will look even better in adverse lighting wide open against the primes. I imagine taking a portrait head shot of a woman beside a window would not produce the same problems.

Hey I was saying you made the right choice. Go for what is a little softer but at least accurate.

 

Godrevy_Rocks_High_Tide by silverfish51, on Flickr

 

I think you're sort of comparing apples to oranges. If you compared a £1000 prime to a £1000 zoom lens, the prime would walk all over the zoom. However, zooms have got much better in recent years and the professional-grade zooms are a match for the mid-range primes. However, none of the zooms I've ever owned (including the amazingly sharp 70-200 f/4 L) have ever come close to my primes - particularly my 24mm and 45mm Tilt-shifts.

I thought they were pretty sharp until I moved to large format, where even my 30-40 year old single-coated Rodenstock Sironar-N 240mm f/9 (which cost £135, including delivery and customs charges) walks all over my Canon lenses. My Nikkor-M 300mm and Fujinon A 180mm are on another level entirely, thanks to their more advanced multi-coating. I've also just picked up a Nikkor-W 135mm f/5.6 for £120 and it's apparently one of the sharpest lenses out there - a good one will resolve 60 lines per mm of detail, which means scanning at 4000dpi could see a resolution improvement over scanning at 2000dpi... that's about 160 megapixels as opposed to the 80 megapixels I currently scan at. Sharpness has taken on an altogether different meaning with the different format and, frankly, if I care about resolution and sharpness I won't be using the DSLR as even the sharpest images are soft and lack depth if I was to make a direct comparison.

While optical formulas have improved massively over the last 10 years, the simplest of lens designs tend to produce the best results. Primes are sharper than zooms at the same aperture, as you say, and really that's all that matters if you were to make comparisons. I believe all of my large format lenses are 4 elements in 3 groups - I can shoot directly into the sun and not have to worry about chromatic aberration, flare or any of the other things that plague the mostly complex optical formulas used in zooms, and even very old lenses can produce quite frankly stunning results.

I don't normally agree with most of what Ken Rockwell says, but this article is great: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/lens-sharpness.htm