Is this a keeper - suggestions for post- processing

[HMW12]

Hello all.
Have not posted here in quite some time but I have been lurking and enjoying everyone's posts. Time to get back in the game again.

I finally bit the bullet last year and bought a DSLR - a Pentax K-r and also a Sigma 10-20 wide angle. A lot to master and to really complicate things I decided to try some low-light photography on vacation last year. Here is one of my first attempts.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hmw12/12572565215/

I would really appreciate some input on the best method to process this? Is it even salvageable? My stepmother liked what she saw on the camera's LCD and asked for a print and I would like to accommodate if possible. I have LR4 and PSE 9. I am not sure where to begin on this one though as there are so many problems - noise, lack of sharpness are the major issues as I see them. I realize I should have shot at a lower ISO and stopped down the lens ( I was even using a tripod ) . Hindsight is 20/20

I would likely crop this to something like a 16x 5 and eliminate a lot of the foreground and have the horizon at about 1/3 from the bottom of the photo. With this type of photo, would you normally even try and bring some detail out of the foreground? I would likely add a frame and caption if I can get it to any sort of reasonable quality. I do have the original DNG file to work with as well

Any suggestions would be more than welcome.

[Manfred M]

Helen - this image is a classic example of why ultra-wide angle lenses are not usually the best tool for landscape work. They give the breadth of scene one is looking for, but add far too much foreground and background. To get an acceptable shot, one has to crop these out of the image, throwing away a lot of pixels of data.

Doing a massive crop is going to get you closer to having a more compelling image.

[NorthernFocus]

I concur with Manfred's assessment. The cropped version is pretty nice.

[nimitzbenedicto]

Helen - this image is a classic example of why ultra-wide angle lenses are not usually the best tool for landscape work. They give the breadth of scene one is looking for, but add far too much foreground and background. To get an acceptable shot, one has to crop these out of the image, throwing away a lot of pixels of data.

Doing a massive crop is going to get you closer to having a more compelling image.
]

Ms. Helen captured a very nice image. I like it.

All her image needs is cropping.

Rather than blaming the lens, right?

[Manfred M]

Just as an aside, I use a different technique to get panoramic images - I take a series of shots (usually with a tripod and a focusing plate, and then stitch the pieces together in Photoshop. This gives me a decent image, with lots of pixels that can be thrown away without impacting any real image quality in the final product.

This thread is an example of a pano I did handheld; that was stitiched together in Photoshop.

Panorama of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

[Black Pearl]

What Manfred said - a classic error with super wide lenses is getting aches and acres of nothing in the frame.
Cropped to a panoramic format it should make a good print, might not be perfect quality but on a wall it will have impact and you won't poke your nose against the glass to look for errors.

[Manfred M]

Ms. Helen captured a very nice image. I like it.

All her image needs is cropping.

Rather than blaming the lens, right?

Victor - the issue is not blaming the lens, rather selecting a tool that has some significant downsides. Helen's original image 1506 x 1000 pixels. My crop of her image is 1227 x 360 pixels; I threw out over 70% if the pixels that the camera recorded, to get the crop I show.

This would not be an issue for the small image displayed here, but if she were to do a decent sized print of it, this would be a real issue.

[chauncey]

There is a question that needs to be considered...do we take pictures for the expressed potential of having them printed or do we take them merely for sharing on the net.
If it's the latter, then it matters not a whit how much cropping is being done to that image.

But, if you shoot with the intention of printing that image at a respectable size (in my mind, no less than 12" on a side) with the IQ to allow a nose length viewing distance. Yeah...anal retentive is correct.

Perusing those dreaded MTF charts will show you that all WA lenses have IQ falloff as you near the edges of the image...in my mind, the only way to avoid that is to photomerge a long prime lens image which allows a huge image to start with, then you can crop to your hearts content.

Of course, that's just my opinion...I could be FOS.

[Saorsa]

There is a question that needs to be considered...do we take pictures for the expressed potential of having them printed or do we take them merely for sharing on the net.
If it's the latter, then it matters not a whit how much cropping is being done to that image.

I own UWAs and still prefer to shoot my landscape panoramas with a longer lens and stitch them It isn't a matter of shooting for print or projection. The greater detail allows me to do either. In fact, I haven't done so for the web, but I frequently use a hi res stitched pan in slideshows. I can zoom in on detail and back out at will.

A few of us discussed this technique in another thread earlier.

Dunagree Light

[Andrew76]

There is a question that needs to be considered...do we take pictures for the expressed potential of having them printed or do we take them merely for sharing on the net.
If it's the latter, then it matters not a whit how much cropping is being done to that image.

This may be true for a 'one-off'. Maybe just to save an image that might be worth saving. I think what Manfred is trying to convey, is that it is not the right tool for the job, regardless of the intended output.

Why purposely purchase a lens that you have to consistently crop away 70% of the pixels to produce an appealing image?

UWAs have their place. I own one. But not for panoramic landscapes, unless there's a really strong foreground element that becomes the focus.

[Saorsa]

Ms. Helen captured a very nice image. I like it.

All her image needs is cropping.

Rather than blaming the lens, right?

It is a nice image and the cropping made it nicer. But, this is a learning forum and I don't believe that discussing alternative techniques and equipment is out of line.

Often we don't realize the value or interest in an image until we start working with it and use some of the tools available to us to help produce the image we saw in our mind when we took the snap.

In another thread, I posted what I had considered a dull sunrise where the sun had come up enough to bring blue to the sky and reflect it in the water. But, looking at it, I saw that there were still traces of the golden dawn I had seen. I used the computer to increase the saturation which brought out the colors better and then cropped away the blue I didn't want.


I'm not sure I would have taken the time or had the equipment or skills to do this in a film/paper environment.

[Colin Southern]

Helen - this image is a classic example of why ultra-wide angle lenses are not usually the best tool for landscape work. They give the breadth of scene one is looking for, but add far too much foreground and background. To get an acceptable shot, one has to crop these out of the image, throwing away a lot of pixels of data.

Manfred,

I'm the one who write the Singh-Ray blog article on "why wide isn't always better" (and I stand by it), but at the end of the day, if you need the field of view then you need the field of view. Yes - you often do need to crop them aggressively - throwing away large areas that don't add enough to justify their inclusion, but what's the alternative? It doesn't make any sense to limit your field of view to something that's insufficient horizontally just to have less to crop vertically & have more data.

Edit: I've just read a bit further (I should have done that first) and have seen your subsequent posts on stitching -- I should add that I don't disagree with anything regarding that technique either. Bottom line is that stitching gets you more information without a doubt, but it's also a reality that it's a technique that may be beyond many, and CAN have some very real-world alignment issues, especially where movement is concerned. Keeping in mind too that not many panoramic shots exceed a 3:1 aspect ratio - and the normal ratio is of course 1.5:1 - so USUALLY we're not throwing away more than around 1/2 the pixels -- and with a modern camera that typically leaves you with around 9 to 18MP (which is plenty).

Keeping in mind too that so long as the image isn't significantly cropped horizontally, then it has no effect on print resolution as the finished print also has the same aspect ratio and thus pixel density requirements.

[DanK]

Keeping in mind too that so long as the image isn't significantly cropped horizontally, then it has no effect on print resolution as the finished print also has the same aspect ratio and thus pixel density requirements.

Colin,

an extremely useful reminder.

Dan

[nimitzbenedicto]

Manfred,

I'm the one who write the Singh-Ray blog article on "why wide isn't always better" (and I stand by it), but at the end of the day, if you need the field of view then you need the field of view. Yes - you often do need to crop them aggressively - throwing away large areas that don't add enough to justify their inclusion, but what's the alternative? It doesn't make any sense to limit your field of view to something that's insufficient horizontally just to have less to crop vertically & have more data.

Edit: I've just read a bit further (I should have done that first) and have seen your subsequent posts on stitching -- I should add that I don't disagree with anything regarding that technique either. Bottom line is that stitching gets you more information without a doubt, but it's also a reality that it's a technique that may be beyond many, and CAN have some very real-world alignment issues, especially where movement is concerned. Keeping in mind too that not many panoramic shots exceed a 3:1 aspect ratio - and the normal ratio is of course 1.5:1 - so USUALLY we're not throwing away more than around 1/2 the pixels -- and with a modern camera that typically leaves you with around 9 to 18MP (which is plenty).

Keeping in mind too that so long as the image isn't significantly cropped horizontally, then it has no effect on print resolution as the finished print also has the same aspect ratio and thus pixel density requirements.

Exactly.

Stitching: Perhaps, ideally, this is best for panoramic shots. However, not everyone coming upon a nice view has all the equipment needed/technique , on site. It's more practical to travel with a wide angle lens and do one's best to take the pix.

[Colin Southern]

Exactly.

Stitching: Perhaps, ideally, this is best for panoramic shots. However, not everyone coming upon a nice view has all the equipment needed/technique , on site. It's more practical to travel with a wide angle lens and do one's best to take the pix.

I just kinda "go with the flow". Case-in-point - with this first image I was walk-abouts with only my 70-200 on me so I shot (I think) 13 shots hand held, using AF markers to get an adequate overlap, and paying particular attention to my position and technique (it's not far off being a 180 degree FoV, and although there was a bit of movement, I was able to "think ahead" and time it so that it didn't occur on an overlapped portion of a shot). Stitching was straight-forward.



In contrast, this image was shot with a UWA lens and cropped - and it's absolutely fine too (it's printed 66 inches wide, and takes pride of place on a clients wall).

[chauncey]

Colin...that second shot using the UWA...were you careful in keeping the horizon in the center as they usually end up being bowed if they aren't centered correctly.

[Colin Southern]

Colin...that second shot using the UWA...were you careful in keeping the horizon in the center as they usually end up being bowed if they aren't centered correctly.

Not particularly, although it probably was anyway. In practice the only thing I'm really conscious of if getting the sensor parallel to the plane I'm shooting so that I don't get converging or diverging lines that should be parallel. Any other minor distortions are trivial to fix using a handful of sliders in ACR (or it can do it automatically if your camera / lens combination is in their database) (and most common ones are).

For landscape like this it's a non-issue, but I do have to tweak things when I'm doing art reproduction to get everything all squared up (with minimal cropping).

[ajohnw]

I think before I came to any conclusions about cropping I would want to see what could be bought up in the dark areas. Not possible to do much from a jpg but bringing up the dark areas increases the cropping possibilities. eg



Which will probably offend some peoples ideas about composition. On the other hand it's not all that much unlike the low wide angle shot with something interesting in the forground except in this instance it's just brightened enough to show colour and shape which curiously is similar to what an artist might get up to - sketchy foreground that adds but doesn't detract from the scene. The slabs lower right need cloning out. A little more interest in the sky might help too but it would be unbalanced if it was cropped more. The foreground is also probably still a tiny bit too dark.

John
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[Black Pearl]

Definitely more artistic than photographic.
Not sure what its like on your monitor but it looks darn odd on mine, much prefer the more realistic dark original.

[Colin Southern]

Revealing dark areas is often a balancing act between "showing something interesting" and "reducing local contrast". Usually I tend to err more on the side of clipping the blacks with images like this, although at times I'll leave a hint of detail in other areas, eg