MONIDA, MONTANA

Located on the Montana/Idaho border. Thus the name. What you see is

the heart of the town. Not much else there.

I like shots like this, and I like this one! If it were mine, I'd straighten out the converging vertical lines in Photoshop, but I guess that's a personal stylistic thing. This has a strong sense of presence, and good color.

Thanks for the comment. I think you are right about the convergence, as it bothered me a bit too. I have to admit I do not know how to fix it.

I can hear a blues guitar (with slide)in the distance as I look at this.Very moody.

P.S. Figure out that D200 yet? Still trying with mine.

Well, I've learned a lot about the D200, but have a long ways to go. It is one hell of a camera though, wouldn't you say?

In Photoshop it's (1) Select All, (2) Edit -> Transform -> Distort, then drag the top corners outward until it's straight. I don't know how to do it with any other tool.

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

Excellent shot. Great angle and feeling of place. I can imagine Frederick Remington stopping to paint this scene. By the way, if you try to straighten the converging verticles (as per Mr. Geyer's suggestion) let me know how it worked, though I don't think it detracts from this shot at all.

I messed with it for a few minutes and was not happy with the results. It's not that the advice is bad, but simply that I did not wish to take the time right now to work at it for awhile and try to improve. I've still got a huge number of photos to scrutinize from the Montana trip, and, yes, I'm going for quantity over quality.

I certainly see no lack of quality here. And I know what you mean about processing. It seems to take more and more time. I started working over my photos this morning at 7am, went straight through till 1:30, went out for lunch (and took some more pictures on the way which are going to take more time yet) came back and started in again. It would be nice if I had a life.

Come on. If someone gave us a real life we wouldn't know what to do with it. That stuff is for guys like Kent.

I think this is one fine photograph! The snow and the empty sky cause the buildings to really pop, and I think give the scene a feeling of isolation. I also like how all the storefronts are different.

 

As an aside, I noticed the nice brick work here and thought about all the wonderful masonry there is all over the country, large town and small. The people who did this were very skilled craftsmen, IMO, who left a lasting legacy.

Thanks. At the time I thought it was quite a discovery. Time has truly passed this place up. As to brick, you are quite right. Brick was never used as extensively in the plains and west for what reason I don't know. My observations are that it was far more common in the midwest and going east.

My feeling is that a lot of this leaning is due to foundational issues. Agree with some lens distortion but that's not the really neat lean issue.

You can profile the D200 for various lenses to correct the distortion they present. I'm leaving the adjusted version over the old so that you can see how much lens distortion there is when dealing with vertical lines at whatever mm setting the lens was on.

When growing up in New England, with healthy eyes, old buildings, like these, always appeared darker in the wettish snow and blue sky. That's why my alteration in my photo redo.

You are quite obviously way more technically qualifed than I in photography, and your version is clearly better than my own. However, I have no clue as to how you do what you suggest. Since my camera knows what lens I have on it, and everything like that, I don't know what else I can do. I'm a total technical klutz. Most of my images are emotive and not tecnically very accomplished. I am not necessarily proud of that, but at least aware of it. I am hoping to become better at the technical details as well as all other aspects of my photography. Could you please further explain what you were suggesting. Thanks for you help and comments.

David, where are you manners ~ you never press on old guy for details.

OK, it's either a function of Nikon Capture or Nikon NX. I'm thinking it's Nikon Capture but not sure. It also may be a plug in, it's been over a year ago that I checked it out and the more I think about it, it must have been a plug in for Nikon Capture. I think there's a calibrate function and then I did a trial download of one lens that I had. I didn't see any great improvement in the limited time I used it. Come to find out, my real issue is with the D200 and not the lenses. I've always been very unhappy with the 'soft focus' of my D200. From what I've read, it's probably due to an early production model.

In Photoshop ~ You can save the settings in the Lens Correction dialog box to reuse with other images made with the same camera, lens, and focal length. Photoshop saves settings for distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberration. Perspective correction settings are not saved. You can save and reuse settings in two ways:Manually save and load settings. Set options in the dialog box, and then choose Save Settings from the Settings menu . To use the saved settings, choose them from the Settings menu. You can also load saved settings that don?t appear in the menu using the Load Settings command in the Settings menu.Set a lens default. If your image has EXIF metadata for the camera, lens, focal length, and f‑stop, you can save the current settings as a lens default. To save the settings, click the Set Lens Default button. When you correct an image that matches the camera, lens, focal length, and f‑stop, the Lens Default option becomes available in the Settings menu. This option is not available if your image doesn?t have EXIF metadata.

Well, obviously I need to look into this. A lot of what you explained is beyond my current capability. I have no problem with trying to improve that capability, but I'm just not sure what mechanism (s) to utilize to accomplish that. Thanks very much for providing this information. I'll try to digest it.