Commons:Photography critiques/April 2008

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Ecola Beach State Park

  • While I do like the contrast of the trees in front of the see and sky on the right-hand side, somehow the foreground on the right side may look too dark a patch. On the other hand I would like to preserve the diagonal line into the bottom right edge; and I worry that the image may loose balance when cropping the tree group at the right-hand side. -- Klaus with K 15:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Oswald West State Park

  • Previous comments about photos I've submitted mention high noise levels. For this, I reduced the camera's ISO to 80 and took advantage of full sunlight. I think I can still see some noise in the distant trees, and maybe in the smooth water as well as the sky. Looking for suggestions to improve this. EncMstr 22:29, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Your framing is less than perfect, but I understand you did not ask about that one. Yes there may be some noise in the water. But sharpening artifacts at the whitewater/greenwater edge bother me more. Also I feel that some of the trees are smudged when they have little contrast. I wonder whether you can change the compression setting on your camera. -- Klaus with K 15:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
It's already set at the minimum amount of compression. Unfortunately it does not have a "do not compress" option—as far as I know. Does the noise look like compression artifacts? EncMstr 06:32, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
My impression is that areas with little features just look soft, blurred, smudged. Once there is sufficient detail or contrast, the camera software sharpening kicks in and makes the detail look on the oversharpened side. My Olympus camera behaves like this, this is why I prefer to use my Canon.
Regarding the slightly too tight vertical image crop, if your camera lense is not wide angle enough, why not take several photos (i.e. left/right, up/down) and stitch them in software. Image:Riomaggiore01 2007-03-31.jpg for instance is composed from four photos. -- Klaus with K 11:38, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Honestly, I didn't notice the vertical pan problem at the time. If I had, I would have tilted up a bit to capture the top of the hill. If the foreground seemed essential, I could have backed up a little to compensate, but it looks like it still would have been fine. It was a hard, muddy hike that day, so I was battling sweat rolling down the face, and not thinking so much about the shot. I haven't had much luck stitching photos together, though this might have been a great one to try it, since it was on a quality tripod so the horizontal pixels probably would match right up. Then there would just be the exposure problem.... (sigh) EncMstr 19:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
When talking stitching, it is not about cut-and-paste in Photoshop or gimp. Handheld photos are ok, as long as they are taken from the same space point. Use appropriate software (Hugin for instance) that cares for image aligning, image warping, vignetting correction and exposure matching. -- Klaus with K 12:19, 29 April 2008 (UTC)