Bouquet of flowers

[arith]

Same problem here; exif states 0.6 metres but if each chair is a metre wide then obviously it is more than that. Anyway my Tamron will not auto focus.

However at least monitor sized it looks ok and I now know where I was, the building looks like the Natural History Museum and this is Volks Garten or Volksgarten.

_MG_3900 copy by Stephen Davis, on Flickr

[Shadowman]

Steve,

For a shot like this you would want to use a smaller aperture (f8 or higher) if you want the museum to be relatively sharp, with the f/6.3 you are using and assuming you are focused on the flowers then this is about as good as you are going to get. Interestingly enough, the structure in front of the museum and the benches look relatively sharp when viewed from a distance, as you zoom in nothing is really sharp except the benches. Were you focusing on the benches?

[arith]

There's somebody in shot so maybe I focused on infinity at 50mm then pulled back the focus until the building just started to blur, but I can't remember.

It's very strange but things in the distance look more in focus and things less focussed are brightly coloured especially red. I overexpose then pull back exposure in PP so maybe the bright colours are blown. But I can't see it in the graph.

[Shadowman]

Steve,

If you like the edit then I'd leave it as is, if you want to analyze further consider asking yourself:

1. Why pull back exposure if you are also going to increase brightness and fill light?
2. Why did you increase the brightness so much, I know it's sometimes necessary when increasing contrast but why so much?
3. Why'd you use the recovery slider and when? Slider is usually used to recover blown out areas, did the clipping warning come from another adjustment such as increasing brightness?

You could get multiple settings from different photographers but those enhancements would be based on that particular photographers vision, you stated that you can't tell if bright colors are blown from the graph, you can click on the small triangles and you'll get indicator if areas are blown, but what's important is can you see detail in the indicated blown areas or does the indicated blown out area stick out like a beacon or display grainy areas in the shadows.

[arith]

Cheers John, I didn't know about the triangles, the brightness isn't adjusted and starts at +50 by default. I overexpose because I've got a noisy camera and more information is captured at above mid dynamic range than below it. Also a standard curve is used to display the image at the back of the camera and more sophisticated software can pull two more stops out.

I've done it for since I've had a 50D and it is a lot better technique for avoiding noise than messing around with complicated noise reduction programs. However not too good for skin tones and I only go to +1 on those, also not so good for HDR because for some reason the pulled back overexposed bits turn pink.

I have now tried the triangle technique and it turns out the flowers are not blown. Cheers for the info.

[IzzieK]

Interesting experiments, Steve...I was also intrigued at the wider aperture and thought it should have been narrower to get a sharper image. Curious, what sort of metering have you been using?

[arith]

I use spot or as near as possible but spot the sky or bright object such as water. The red flowers should have higher definition, in the shade they have but according to camera raw all are in exposure.

Strangely I was taught photography from age 11 to about age 14 and seem to remember wide lens for natural and short dof depending on distance, closed down aperture for squeezed look but higher dof. Cheers Izzie.