Wednesday Landscapes, 28 June 2017

You are invited to upload one or more of your landscape photos and, if you’d like, to accompany your image with some commentary: challenges you faced in making the image? your intent for the image? settings? post-processing decisions? why you did what you did? the place and time? or an aspect you’d like feedback on? And please feel free to ask questions of others who have posted images or to join the discussion. If you don’t feel like using words, that’s OK too—unaccompanied images (or unaccompanied words, for that matter) are also very much welcomed. As for the technicalities, the usual forum guidelines apply: files < 1 MB; image size <1000 px maximum dimension.

 

Thanks for the discussion last week on managing sunrise and sunset color—it gave me a lot to think about and some good ideas to try (if and when the coastal fog lifts). The discussion also got me to look back through my sunrise files, and I came across this one from February (ISO 1600 , f/11, 1/120 s, 35 mm; WB 5250 K, tint +6). The only processing was in Lightroom—moderately increased clarity (+32), increased white point (+54) and strongly reduced highlights (-83). I added a gradient in the foreground to further increase clarity, further increase the white point, and increase exposure there by 1/2 stop. I didn’t mess with the colors directly, but the increased white point plus reduced highlights effectively increased the color intensity in the light tones. And a question I tagged onto my response in last week’s thread that you might not have seen—how many of you calibrate your monitor?

 

a photo of the dorset countryside taken in winter 2016/17 using sony a6000 and 20/2.8 lens. sooc* jpeg, resized in pixelmator. the cooler weather looks so inviting from 35 degree heat.

 

 

*sooc = straight out of compton, a preset i adore.

Good morning, everyone. I finally have something to post. I haven't shot much since I purchased my d750 last fall. It's an upgrade from my d7000 and to me, full-frame is much different than crop sensor. I believe I was at f8 for this photo - I should have stopped down some more but i was in a hurry to try to get the sun before it dropped below the hill. This is my neighbor's field on Sunday. It's quite the magical place. As I write this, I can see out my front window that the field is covered in fog; the field has something to offer every season. Please let me know what else I could have done with this image - i did adjust clarity and played with some of the colors just a little bit in PS. There's nothing I can do about that wire, though...

how many of you calibrate your monitor?

 

 

I do, with my trusty Eye-One (i1) thingie that hangs over the monitor while the software is running. It doesn't seem to be nearly as important nowadays as when I had ten-ton CRTs.

 

The other thing to ask about is room light. I see people, all the time, editing with bright window light in the room. And/or strongly colored stuff nearby. :(

The only calibration I have ever done was to scan in an A4 image in rainbow colours, then adjust the monitor until the image displayed looked as close as I could get to the original. Totally unscientific, but close enough for Rock and Roll.

re calibration, i don't but then i don't have a monitor. even when i had a computer, monitor and i1 thingy, i thought the whole idea of calibration a scam(unless u were in advertising or summink). to me a photo's success shouldn't depend on an exact or even close rgb mapping. not saying i had that many successful photos before or after calibration.

 

i think my views are being upheld by today's photojournalists who post un-colour-corrected photos of the trumpet who they seem to shoot using some weird colour preset.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Norman 202

Lower Manhattan At Sunrise

 

Lower Manhattan by David Stephens, on Flickr

 

This was taken at the end of a transatlantic trip on the Queen Mary 2. I was up at pre-dawn and ended up with quite a few nice shots, including the Verazanno Bridge before sunup. This is my overall favorite. It's gotten a little action on Getty, but no sales to major publications.

 

Canon 5D MkIII, EF 24-105mm f/4L IS, handheld, at 67mm, ISO 800, f/11, 1/125-sec. RAW conversion in DxO Optics Pro, with very little adjustment. Just look for the light and shoot.

 

My monitor is a 27" NEC with an included SpectraView II calibration instrument and software. I process in a room with the blinds closed and overhead lights off, with a small desk lamp at a low level. The biggest mistake that I see in others' processing is that they have their monitors too bright (using the showroom setting), resulting in images that are too dark. The other fault is trying to get rid of every last bit of highlight blowout, using a global adjustment instead of a local adjustment, resulting, again, in a too dark image. It's not quite as frequent a problem with landscape shooters as with my bird and wildlife buddies (white birds drive them crazy), but it's still a common issue.

 

I recommend using a calibrated monitor, in a room that doesn't have bright lights, either from outside or overhead.

re calibration, i don't but then i don't have a monitor. even when i had a computer, monitor and i1 thingy, i thought the whole idea of calibration a scam(unless u were in advertising or summink). to me a photo's success shouldn't depend on an exact or even close rgb mapping. not saying i had that many successful photos before or after calibration.

....

 

For me, the biggest value in monitor calibration is getting the brightness right, not in exact RGB replication. Earlier in the thread, I said that I believe that many photographers are using "showroom settings", which results in bright monitor images that will stand out on a showroom floor, but will overcook your eyes when processing and lead you to turn down the EV too much. You might say, "Well half the viewers out there have their monitors set that way" and you'd be right. The problem comes when printing. Printing is also an area where color matching becomes more important, but even your calibrated monitor might not agree with your printer. That's a whole other topic.

 

In last week's thread, I talked about getting colors right when I capture a particularly fantastic sunrise or sunset, where the colors verge on unbelievable. That's an eye and memory issue, not a monitor calibration issue. That's why I've taken to carrying a color card, so that I've got an objective measure to use when setting color temperatures in RAW conversion.

 

Sunrise, Hendry's Beach, Santa Barbara, California,

 

I edited this image on my 2010 13" MacBook Pro, which I do not calibrate. This works fine for eMail and Pnet images, but for printing I need a larger monitor and better color management. When I am home, which is where I print, I use a 2008 Mac Pro desktop for editing with a 24" Dell Ultrasharp 2415 monitor that I calibrate with an X-Rite i1 Display Pro.

...When I am home, which is where I print, I use a 2008 Mac Pro desktop for editing with a 24" Dell Ultrasharp 2415 monitor that I calibrate with an X-Rite i1 Display Pro.

 

Those Dell Ultrasharp monitors are excellent values.