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Went to Bombo Quarry this morning for a sunrise and at first the sunrise was poor but got better later on once the sun got through the lower clouds. I started off by using my ND Grads but was too hard to hide the grad line and wanted to try something different, so took two images with a difference of 4 stops of light between them and blended them in photoshop. It took ages to blend becuase of the sudden step in light and did my best to hide it but I know it is still visable. Which one do you prefer out of the two? They are pretty similar just taken at different times and one has a wider crop.



Camera - Nikon D90
Exposure - Varied
Aperture - f/10.0
Focal Length - 11 mm
ISO Speed - 100



Camera - Nikon D90
Exposure - Varied
Aperture - f/10.0
Focal Length - 11 mm
ISO Speed - 100

Chris, i like them both and well done but i do like the 2nd with the sun and it's rays and the water on the 1st is bit more distracting for me but love #2, well done.

Cheers
BBJ

I also like both of them, but I prefer the second. It has
more vibrant colours.

Hi Chris, Kudos for getting there at an early hour.

While these are overall ok, I think the lack of detail in the cliff (which occupies a significant amount of realestate) detracts from the overall feel somewhat. If you look at the left upper of the images you will see what I mean. #1 suffers worst in this regard.

Nice timing of the sun in #2.

I find enough detail in those cliff faces, any more and you will be bordering towards that overcooked HDR/CGI look.

The main question for you Chris is if you are happy with the images? Do these portray what you want to portray?

I love the sun and the rays of light in #2, but I do like the foreground and motion in #1....

My apologies! I believe my monitor must be packing it in. I do see enough detail with a friend's monitor!!

surenj wrote:My apologies! I believe my monitor must be packing it in. I do see enough detail with a friend's monitor!!

Hope it isnt a monitor that you have only had for a short while. I was wondering why you were saying things were dark on a few different images.

aim54x wrote:Hope it isnt a monitor that you have only had for a short while

No. it's about 4 years old. my calibrator doesn't do brightness, just color. I find that if I turn it up too high, then prints appear quite dark...

The second one is stronger out of the two, the first feels a bit too dark.

surenj wrote:

aim54x wrote:Hope it isnt a monitor that you have only had for a short while

No. it's about 4 years old. my calibrator doesn't do brightness, just color. I find that if I turn it up too high, then prints appear quite dark...

Well now you have a good excuse to get something new....I thought you were using a Spyder 3.....they do an ambient light reading and calibrate for display brightness as well (unless the express version misses out on that...I can never remember)

Sorry for the late reply. Thank you everyone for you kind words. I agree with you all that image #2 is better overall as it has a better exposure, more interest and vibrance.

That's not good that your monitors brightness is out surenj. My laptop screen is completely different to my monitor which is really annoying but I have checked and my monitors colours and brightness isn't too bad so I always edit on my monitor.