A few basic questions and some ideas for PP

[pskteja]

I clicked this image yesterday around an hour before sunset at the Alviso County State Park, CA. I used a 18-55mm lens on a Canon T3i. If I remember correctly this photo was taken @ around-22mm. The lens had a polarizer along with a Hoya ND-400 filter. I clicked it with ISO 100, f/16 and a 30-sec exposure setting. I have some questions while clicking this -

1. Is it recommended to use a polarizer along with a ND filter. Is there any link between the effect of one on another or are they independent.
2. Is this setting of ISO, f-no., exposure good for the image I clicked.
3. Any recommendations on post-processing this image.

Any other suggestions and advice are welcome.

[Stagecoach]

Hi Teja,

Before commenting upon the settings you used did you intentionally want a long exposure of 30 seconds (exif states 25") to 'blur' the moving grass ?

[Manfred M]

I'm not sure why you wanted to use the ND filter for such a long exposure. The technique you used is often used for blurring moving water, but I've not seen it used for this type of shot. I likely would have shot this without the ND at a faster shutter speed. I tend to shot at low ISO as well. You might want to look at shooting at f/11 or faster as diffraction will start causing some image softening at f/16.

Are you shooting jpeg or RAW? I would make some tweaks, depending on what you are doing.

The ND and polarizer are independent of each other, but you will loose around 1-1/2 stops of light shooting with the polarizer. Care has to be taken with polarizers with wide angle shots as banding in the sky is a common problem, but if you shot at 22mm you might be outside of the problem area. Don't forget that polarizers give their maximum effect on skies when your shot is at right angles to the sunlight (I assume that this is what is happening here).

[pskteja]

Sorry for the late reply. I was out backpacking. Summer's here and California is the place to be!!

@Grahame Yes. I wanted to blur the moving grass. But I do not think there was so much wind when I was out there. Hence probably I do not see any effect with such a long duration of exposure too. I want to know if I got the colour composition right here. I was a bit disappointed of not being able to brighten the wooden structure. Looks a bit dull to my eyes.

@Manfred Thanks. I have shot it in jpeg. Can you point me to a post (I am sure it exists in CiC) which explains the RAW format. I have never done it before. Yes, the sun was almost down and I had this frame at right angle to the sunlight.

[Geoff F]

This CinC Tutorial gives a basic understanding about shooting with Raw.

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...ile-format.htm

Then there is a lot more here

http://ronbigelow.com/articles/raw/raw.htm

I shoot virtually everything in Raw now.