St Helens Pt, Tasmania - Comments Please!

[Manta]

Hi all

It seems like years since I've posted an image here and it's SO good to be back! I recently dusted off the gear and flew off to Tassie to see what I'd been missing out on all this time. What a landscape photographer's paradise! I've become very rusty in my technique and composition skills so would greatly appreciate any comments/opinions you have of this one. It's one of my favourites from the trip - mostly because of the tricky lighting. This was taken around 5pm with a storm approaching from the west (left of frame). I've also been experimenting with hyperfocal distances to get everything into focus without sacrificing aperture - not sure how successfully I've pulled this off.

Thanks for looking!

[surenj]

Hi Simon,
If you are rusty and pulling off hyperfocal distances, I would be scared to think how you'd do if you were at peak form!

I really like this scene and the HDR you have done. I would tend to increase the blues of the sky to hide the CA on the trees. [otherwise just remove the CA]
It looks like the DOF is pretty maximal on this one!

Maybe you can share how you did the hyperfocal distance calculations...

[Killakoala]

Nice to see you back Simon. Yes, Tassie is indeed the best place in Australia to photograph. Not just because of the scenery but with the higher latitude, you also get the added bonus of great light.

When I first opened up this thread and saw the photo I thought, 'Oooooooo, nice.'

Is it an HDR image or did you do some funky post processing?

My only complaint is the effect of severe chromatic aberration on the trees on the right other wise the composition and light look terrific. You have kept good detail all the way to the horizon too.

Thanks for sharing.

[blacknstormy]

Yippee Simon - about time you got out about and took shots !!! And I'm soooo jealous - what a magical place to get to!!
Love the shot - the CA around the trees has already been pointed out, great HD work, and beautiful beautiful colours on those rocks !!!
Hope you are back into the groove now, and we get to see heaps more photos
Hugs
Rel

[Manta]

Thanks all

Surenj - I was pretty much guessing the hyperfocal. I played around the Dr DOF application on my iPhone and got a rough estimate of where the point should be for the Tokina 12-24 I was using but, apart from that, it was hit and miss.THanks for your kind words.

Killa - yep, I used some different curve adjustment layers with masks. I find that gives me more control than a one-stop HDR tool and I actually learn more about the tones in my images.

Rel - good to be back!

It wasn't CA but rather a vestige of a darker curves adjustment that I wasn't careful enough with around the trees. My mistake! Fixed now. I think.

[zafra52]

Simon, my advice is to crop some of the sky and forground off making the image into a panorama. I am not sure if you also want that much colour, my view is that it looks a bit artificial and over saturated. Specially with everything in the image is also so sharp it cuts your vision. Of course, all depends on what you are going to do with this image and wheather as is appeals to you. If you like it as it is, please disregard the above.

[stubbsy]

Simon

Firstly - you have a great image (especially now the "CA" has been fixed).

It's interesting how we all see an image differently. For me, rather than the pano crop suggested by zafra I'd be inclined to chop some from the right hand side to remove the second tree.

[Manta]

Thanks Zafra and Peter for your comments.

Zafra - seems everytime I open this image the colour has a different appeal. Sometimes I like it, others I too find it a little full on. Truth is, it's an extremely accurate rendition of what the colours are like there. The light is so clear, as Steve attests to above, that I found myself fascinated by it. Especially as we had flown out of Brissy the morning of that big dust storm. It's like the air in Tassie has been washed and polished.

Peter - I initially thought that second tree was a problem but when I tried a few crop variations. I first thought I wouldn't be left with enough room to the right of the big tree to balance the picture. This looks reasonable though:



Thanks again!

[gstark]

Simon,

With the 12-24, who cares about hyperfocal anyway?

[surenj]

With the 12-24, who cares about hyperfocal anyway?

No seriously, would you need to care, if you wanted ALL the foreground rocks to be in focus as well as the rest of the image?

[gstark]

With the 12-24, who cares about hyperfocal anyway?

No seriously, would you need to care, if you wanted ALL the foreground rocks to be in focus as well as the rest of the image?

Suren,

That would actually depend upon which end of the glass he was using. If he mounted the glass backwards .....

Sorry.

At the 24mm end of the range, it's quite possible that he has enough scope within the focus range of the camera that hyperfocal does come into play. As we shoot wider, the effective breadth of the range that will appear to be in focus will increase, and hyperfocal would become less of an issue. At 12mm, I wouldn't expect too much of a range.

The real problem today is in actually bringing this to bear upon one's shooting. On older glass, the lens manufacturers used to print, on the lens barrels, the range of the in-focus areas at a selected number of f-stop settings. Thus you could look at your lens, set one end of the printed range to infinity, and the other would become your close focus distance. No need for AF (and for several of us older farts it had not yet been invented) and no real need for other focus aids either.

Basically you could compose, set your lens for hyperfocal distance, set the camera's exposure, and shoot.

Today we don't have those markings, and I would expect that is why Simon brought the iPhone app into play.

[Manta]

Cheers Gary.
I've still got sone old lenses with the DOF markings but have become lazy with the modern AF glass. I usually just try to take a stab at DOF with basic aperture settings but I was still getting out of focus areas where I didn't want them or, worse, having to shoot at small apertures/slow shutter speeds to acheive what I thought was the only way to get maximum sharpness front to back. I'm certainly still learning

[zafra52]

For some reason the second version you post seems more credible, and yet there is more colour but less sharpness. Simon, the main thing is that you like it because we all have different criteria, perspectives and monitors (with and without calibration, like mine). So if the colours look to you authentic, then there is it.

[Manta]

Monitor shmonitor - it's probably just my dodgy eyesight!