'Over the Edge' (Photographing Bryce Canyon, Utah)**

'Over the Edge' (Photographing Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah) is

self-explanatory. The lens is a 10.5 mm Nikkor DX (digital)

fisheye, with shadow/highlight tool applied to an intentionally

underexesposed image (to avoid blowouts in the sky). Your rating

and critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or

very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment/Please share your superior knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John (one misstep and the

photographer would have been the subject of a sad article in a

newspaper)

I thought this was a very original shot. The colors very very good and I loved the sky effect. It reminded me of my grandfather who was a consumate photographer and was always hanging over and out somewhere to get a great picture. Nicely done.

If you look at the rightmost foot of the tripod, it's right at the edge of the canyon's lip with a 500 to 1,000 foot drop almost straight down, and if he had been absent-minded, he would have tumbled (to his death, probably, although the canyon wall there has some slight slope, and trails below that wind around spires called 'hoodoos' -- remnants of erosion.

 

Your grandfather must have been a very special man.

 

It's amazing that they allow small children near here and no fencing in many places -- at some places -- overlooks, there are steel/wire fences over which one can literally hang, which is usefully when one is photographing with a 'fisheye' lens which takes in 180 degrees, as here.

 

(This is my first use of this particular fisheye, and Thank God for a digital camera, as the exposures are very tricky -- also Thank God! for an speckled sky, to obscure the sun to avoid 'huge' Exposure Value extremes, or the photo would have been ruined. Photographing with a fisheye is a little tricky.

 

Thanks for the comment.

 

John (Crosley)

fantastic use of fish eye lens

When shooting with a fisheye, one must expose for the brightest part of the scene, I found, as I bracketed and found my darkest exposure in which this guy and canyon were literally dark in the image, was the image that was the 'keeper'

 

I used the in-camera histogram to ensure that I still had 'detail' in the shadows -- which is the real reason those histogram displays are there.

 

I applied 'shadow/highlight' tool from Photoshop CS2 to bring the details out of the shadows to resurrect the canyon detail. Further, I 'selected' the photographer using the magnetic selection tool in Photoshop and selectively lightened him a bit as the sun was on his front, but I still wanted to present him in silhouette for most dramatic effect (but not completely black - just to add some detail).

 

The sky was fortunate -- a remnant of storms that have passed over California flooding that state, and which are headed toward the East, perhaps to cause tornados or other weather disruptions. One couldn't have asked for a more interesting sky, and it was just a matter of waiting for the broken stratus to obscure the sun to keep the sky from entirely 'blowing out'.

 

John (Crosley)

I could make a whole folder just out of the images from various vantages from this park that day (yesterday).

 

Thanks for the comment.

 

It's my first experience with this particular lens.

 

You may recall that Nikon's earlier fisheyes for film included one that weighed about 12 pounds and resulted in a circular image on a rectangular frame and was incredibly rare and expensive -- and equally hard to use.

 

This 10.5 mm DX (digital) fisheye, pretty cheap by Nikon lens standards, is very, very small (the smallest lens I own) and its price also makes it one of the cheapest in my bag of Nikon lenses.

 

(It's still way too expensive, and people stopped me and asked 'What is that?' -- even experienced Nikon users of whom there were quite a few -- including pros from as far away as England and South Africa).

 

Thanks again.

 

John (Crosley)

This photo was not sharpened.

 

Shutterbug magazine says in this month's issue: All digital images must be sharpened.

 

Of course some in-camera sharpenening was employed, as this is a JPEG image, so I guess it is 'sharpened' somewhat.

 

However, 'smart sharpen' has not been applied to this image.

 

This particular fisheye lens (10.5 mm) is bound to be a classic Nikkor lens -- it's remarkably sharp -- like my 12~24 DX zoom, also a standout for sharpness (although much more expensive) and which also produces images which do not appear to require 'sharpening' to appear 'tack sharp'.

 

John (Crosley)

 

Nice motif, thanks for the story. The fisheye perspective is awesome, and you were lucky with the sky. I must say, it looks kind of unnatural for me - the shadow - highlight tool is nice but results look often not so good IMO. If you asked this guy to lend his tripod to you for a bracket exposure series, you would have three different exposures, with no motion shift for easy composite in PS, as described in this tutorial I mean, this scenery has more dynamic range than a digital sensor could handle well. You could get more latitude with exposure bracketing, film cost is no issue with digital...

If this scene looks a bit 'unnatural' it's more I think because it has minimal 'manipulation' other than just shadow/highlight filter, rather than adding saturation and working with contrast/brightness and/or curves and 'saturation' other than through the shadow/highlight filter -- and it also is unsharpened. It can be improved even though I did not use your recommended methods, primarily because I shot with a D200, I think because (to me I feel) the D200 has a greater dynamic range.

 

If I were really to 'work' this image, I think you might be surprised, but I shot this yesterday and worked it up in a few minutes late last night while really tired after being up two days straight, and it as shot (without due care, I admit) at a somewhat higher than optimal ISO for a landscape and a prime lens.

 

I did confirm that the exposure information was all there, even in the much darker canyon regions by reviewing the histogram when I reviewed the exposure, and I did bracket my exposures and had three tripods with me in my car, but was dog tired from driving all night and at 8,100 feet and without sleep or foot and dehydrated, sucking air, needing a restroom, setting up my tripod was too much (plus this guy was moving about and soon moving on).

 

And, I'm not working for National Geographic and seldom take landscapes so this really is a learning experience for me -- you'll find very few landscapes in my folders.

 

I thank you profusely for the linked article for blending exposures -- a technique I knew about, and there's a fourth technique, also, I think, using conversion to LAB color, for even better rendition, I am told, and if anyone has a link to a site that has a LAB color brightness adjustment/blending tutorial for that, I'd appreciated their placing it in a comment and attaching it.

 

I never had used this fisheye before -- it was pristine in its velvet bag with lens cap, and this practically was its first use -- not bad for a first use, though. (I had used -- and own giant film fisheye lenses, but they have been unused because of their impracticality.)

 

I did learn to bracket all my exposures after reviewing histograms and the LCD display which showed 'blown highlights', as I realized that anything with blown highlights would have to be discarded -- or severly cropped.

 

What did turn out well (so far as I can tell without working on them yet) was the views hanging over the railings looking down with minimal sky showing and all tha red rock and canyon rim -- but I couldn't resist photographing this photo professional, standing there on the lip, and he hardly wanted to stand there behind his giant Nikon/lens combination, as he was moving around very much, not looking through his lens much and had to be coaxed into this position, just for 20 seconds or so.

 

I am suitably impressed with the dynamic range of my D200s, which seem far to exceed my D2Xs, although the testers may prove me wrong. This closely approximates what I feel I saw in terms of color rendition and visual impact (although not with the fisheye effect, of course, and I was seated securely on a bench fairly near the canyon lip myself, but I have ACROPHOBIA, if you can imagine, so this guy's position really scared me 'by proxy'.

 

I am forever grateful when I post something, such as this unusual image, and some generous member, such as yourself, says 'Here, I have three other ways to do it better, and not only that, here's an authoritative source AND a link to that source.'

 

If that source can stay linked for a long time, I will be more than happy to keep referring new members/subscribers to this image and your link, giving appropriate due to you. (no use to hog attention to myself/I like to share)

 

Photo.net is a wonderful site, in my opinion, just for the ability to share, as you and I have done here.

 

My enormous gratitude to you for your generosity and the trouble you took in sharing; I know I will profit as I experiment with the methods you have shown me HOW to use (I knew of them but not how to employ them in such detail or so clearly, and that had kept me from hauling out my tripods and setting up. Now that I know I can 'bracket' and do the same thing in a burst, I'll be more willing to try it, especially if I can do so hand held.

 

Thanks again.

 

John (Crosley)

John, my impression of somewhat unnatural tones might be due to the sky tones. I guess you applied shadow - highlight not selectively, and you impoved the Canyon and foreground, with simultaneously flattening sky tones. Absolutely correct in-camera work and postprocessing for the shadows, expose for the highlights, but histogram `to the right`, and pull out shadow detail from NEF or RAW data. D200 offers probably more latitude than other DSLR, but far less than film, for sure. To get the best tonal quality from backlight sceneries, it is worth trying bracketing to avoid brutal tweaking of shadows in NEF/ RAW of a single exposure. If I have a promising motif, I do ALWAYS bracket shots for possible use later on. Here, if you have a NEF I would convert twice, `exposed` for highlights and shadows, and make a composite from sky and land parts in PS. Would be interesting to see the original RAW / NEF straight out of the camera. BTW, being tired is not nesessarily a disadvantage - some of my best PS works were made after a hard day, being tired...