Back Creek / Low Tide

A gentle shot: water, sand, winter grass and trees. Sky and reflections. Zoomed in slightly for framing.

Sony DSC H50 at 60mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.

In Lightroom, added Vibrance and Clarity. A touch of Fill Light and Blackpoint slightly right. Sharpen Landscape preset.

It was too cold out for looking for images yesterday so I spent some time in LightZone, creating alternative renderings of a few images. LightZone is based on manipulating the traditional exposure Zones (as popularized by Ansel Adams in his work)…but, of course, harnessing the power of the computer, LightZone takes the process much further.

Here is an example of fairly extreme processing of the image above.

As you can see, Lightzone can extend the tonal range, and emphasize the detail in the image. I applied the Crisp look,  several layers of Relight (with various Shadow, Highlight, and Detail settings), Local Contrast, Vibrance, and Sharpening. To me the result approaches a painting of the scene more closely than it does a photograph, but it is clearly the same image as the first.

Not a question of better or worse so much as different.

From Around Home, Kennebunk ME.

Winter Sea / Winter Sun

Happy Sunday!

Cold. It was very cold on the beach in Maine yesterday. So cold it was uncomfortable using the camera with gloves, and when I took them off, just for a moment to use my iPhone, the pain drove me back to the car post haste.

Still there is a beauty to the winter sun streaming across a cold still ocean and the beach.

Including the sun in the frame is challenge, and, as a survivor of the film era, I always wonder if I am going to damage the sensor (you could burn holes in your SLR shutter curtain, and the film itself, by including the unmasked sun back in the day)…but sometimes it is just too much to resist. The Sony H50 gives just a bit of flare around the sun itself, which manifests as a purple image of the diaphragm, but sometimes, as in this image, I am willing to put up with it for overall effect.

To limit the flare I under-exposed the image using Exposure Compensation of –.7 EV, and then processed in Lightroom to bring the foreground up. I tired exposures at everything from 0EV to –1.7, but the darker shots showed too much mottling when brought up with Fill Light in Lightroom.

Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F8 @ 1/3200th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto. –.7EV

As mentioned, Fill Light to bring up exposure in the foreground. Blackpoint to the right to restore balance (this combination has the effect of a sudo-hdr…used with restraint it can expand the apparent contrast range of the image). A bit of Recovery for the sky and clouds. Added Clarity and Vibrance. The lens flare was much more magenta/purple in the original and brighter. I found it too distracting and too unnatural looking, so I used the selective HSL controls to reduce both the saturation and the luminance of the particular shade of magenta/purple involved and the correct the hue toward green/blue. If you don’t use Lightroom, the selective HSL control has a selection point which you place over the offending color in the image, click the mouse and drag up or down to adjust the color to your liking. Very powerful. Overuse can lead to a mottled look in blue sky, however, as the blue of the sky is really a mix of colors you are adjusting when you use the selective control. Color and luminance noise reduction can help, as they did in this image.

From Around Home, Kennebunk ME.

Limpkin Leavings

The Limpkin is a strange bird, only vaguely related to any other living bird species, and feeds almost exclusively on the Apple Snail. That long bill has a special grove tool that enables the Limpkin to pluck the snail from its shell. You rarely (or at least “I” rarely see) an Apple Snail shell like this one…whole.

I could not resist the shape and the light and got down on the ground with the filp out lcd of the Sony to take the pic.

Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.

Added Clarity and Vibrance in Lightroom. Blackpoint to the right. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped for composition.

The Limpkin pic, by the way, was also taken out the window of the car with the Sony @ 465mm equivalent, though I have PhotoScoped pics of the same bird. That is how close I got. I have never seen a Limpkin this close!

From Space Coast Briding.

All Shook Up

While taking some shots of this Snowy Egret in the top of the Mangrove bush, he decided he had an itch he could not reach…and attempted to shake it out. I saw it happening, was prefocused and ready, and the Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL caught it. Bang.

Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at about 1400mm equivalent feild of view. 1/750th @ ISO 100. Metered at about f5.6.

Added Clarity and Vibrance in Lightroom. A touch of Fill Light and Blackpoint slightly right. Because I had some sky reflection in the shadows of the white features, I used the selective Satruation control to reduce saturation only of the particular shade of blue there.

From Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL.

Roseate Spoonbill Overload

Someone made the mistake of requesting more Roseate Spoonbills! I photograph the Spoonbills every trip to Merritt Island in January, when they are just coming into breeding plumage, and then again, hopefully, in April in St. Augustine in full breeding.

Late afternoon, almost sunset, light in all these shots. Partial backlighting in the last three. Once more the programmed auto in the Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL handles exposure very well in tricky situations.

Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at various magnifications and exposures.

In Lightroom, I added Clarity and Vibrance, reduced contrast to –20, and used the Sharpen Landscape preset. Blackpoint just slightly right.

From Latest PhotoScoped.

Bittern in the Reeds

American Bittern at Viera Wetlands in Melbourne FL. Bitterns are hard to see. On rare occasions they will stand out in plain sight, but mostly they lurk in the deep reed beds, and this is a very typical view.

Surprisingly, the Auto Focus Assist on the Zeiss PhotoScope handled this well. I lost a few shots, and switched it off, for the final few…but most of the images were correctly focused.

Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 1600mm equivalent field of view. 1/620th @ ISO 100. Metered at about f5.6. Programmed auto. Auto Focus Assist.

Added Clarity and Vibrance in Lightroom. Sharpen Landscape preset. Blackpoint just slightly right.

From Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL.

Space Coast Dawn

You get a break from Space Coast birds today. This is the view that met me Saturday morning when I opened the door of my hotel room. Not much to do here but point and shoot. Exposed for the sky, of course, and I let the palms go completely black for effect.

Sony DSC H50 at 31mm equivalent. F2.7 @ 1/30th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.

Recovery in Lightroom for the sky. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Blackpoint just slightly right. Sharpen Landscape preset.

But, of course, I couldn’t take just one. This one showed considerable perspective distortion in the trees (they leaned in to the center at the edges), so I exported it to PhotoShop Elements 7 and used the Camera Distortion filter set to correct it.

And finally a closer view of the trees, zoomed in for cropping.