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HDR photo
HDR photo from five exposures.
Unprocessed JPEGs straight out of camera:
I took an HDR photo of a dramatic sunset that I'm quite pleased with. There was no tone mapping, just curves, a simulated neutral density filter of 1 EV, and white balance. I want to submit it to com:FPC, but I'm worried that people will find it overprocessed. So, I'm looking for a second opinion on whether this level of processing looks right before I submit it for FPC. dllu(t,c)16:47, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
I don't think it looks overprocessed. The colours look good but there's a lot of magenta CA at the buildings which should be removed. Regarding FPC I'm not sure about the composition which looks quite random. The people are not helpful, either. I'm sorry, but although the sky looks great indeed I'd not support this nomination at FPC. --Code (talk) 17:40, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the critique. I'll think more carefully about the composition. I think it's nice to get the landmarks of the two universities in the same shot, but I'm not too sure how to make it work. This was the approximate field of view of the picture. As for people in the frame, with dramatic sunsets like these, it's hard to avoid people coming out to look at the sunset. I suppose I could take many shots and blend them to get rid of people, but the lighting changes significantly even within 2 minutes. The random crap on the ground due to construction doesn't help either. And thanks for pointing out the magenta fringes... this lens gives me a hell of a headache with its strong CA. When my new apochromatic lens arrives next year, it should be better I hope. dllu(t,c)18:02, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
Voigtlaender Heliar Classic VM 75mm f1.8, which has six spherical elements in three doublet groups. The lens has rather good bokeh and is quite compact for a fast medium telephoto; the lateral CAs are its biggest weakness. So, it's more of a portrait lens and less suitable for this type of shot. I recently ordered a Voigtlaender Apo-Lanthar 90mm f/3.5 SL, which is highly recommended by Ming Thein, one of my favourite photographers, and has almost no lateral CA, so we shall see if that makes better photos after it arrives sometime between Mon. Dec. 21 - Tue. Jan. 5. dllu(t,c)19:51, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
In general, they are quite sharp. On a technical note, the amount of image noise is higher than expected for ISO 100, especially colour noise. My guess is that you didn't use any sort of noise reduction in RawTherapee. Try playing around with the chrominance slider to see if you can make it look smoother. Composition-wise, while the photos are reasonably well-composed, the background is somewhat busy and distracting. Try to look for nice-looking backgrounds (green leaves and grass, as opposed to brown dirt), and get the background to be as simple as possible. Try using a larger aperture (lower f-stop), but be careful if that causes part of the flower to be blurry as well (in that case, try focus bracketing) --- it's a tricky balance between isolating the subject from the background and not having all of the subject in focus. But I think the last picture, for example, has a mostly planar subject so you can probably shoot wide open and still have the both flowers in focus. Also, you can try adjusting the black point to make the background darker to let the flower stand out more --- the last picture in particular seems to have a rather high black point, causing the colors to appear slightly washed out (maybe that's your style -- everyone's preferences are different and some people like the slightly washed-out look because it looks like film). Lastly, for the last picture I would crop it like this. For the second picture, I would crop out the stuff on the bottom edge like so. dllu(t,c)02:11, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
Not the chrominance bar, because can make some colors (red and green especially) duller, luminance bar slider, with luminance at 100 and luminace/detail at 94-95. --C messier (talk) 11:15, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
