I hope you had a fun time with this one-off car display. I was crossing my fingers that someone would fully embrace the absurdity of the car emerging from the ground. We did get a lot of tight crops on the speedster that sort of eliminated the playful element. I guess it was a tough choice to choose to either focus on just getting the car "right" and going for "a bigger picture."
Don't know what everyone thought of working with an alternate brand RAW file, but one thing that stood out for me was the color red. The Lumix just doesn't seem to handle red the way my Pentax does. (My cell-phone camera has issues with red too.) No idea if that's due to the sensor size, or brand. I imagine the smaller-sensored cameras are more "software-tuned" to deal with sharpening issues, rather than getting some colors (RED) spot-on. That said, the other shots from that day handled blues & greens quite nicely!
So here's a few thoughts on the entries:
BigMackCam: "Straightforward" it is. Good job of pushing the limits on the sharpening. This, and the last entry got the best out of those lovely rain-drops in my opinion.
jcomely: Again with the rain-drops. Definitely a feature here!. This is a good example of what I was saying about the rendering of the color red on this camera. It really makes it tough to get it right in this sort of processing.
Uncle Vanya: Nice to see a bit more of the car emerging on this one. And I see you completely solved the red issue. This B&W works nicely. Very classy. Love it.
fizzio: Yes! Probably the best entry at capturing the car "being born." The black-cherry red is intriguing too. I'm picturing it on the car for real, and I like !
todd: Fun entry! Oh goodness, that would look awesome as a gigantic mural on the garage wall!
noelcmn: Both fine entries. Monochrome conversion really helping the wonky reds in my picture, BUT - I also think your color render did a great job at dealing with that purple to orange can't-make-up-its-mind red.
tuggie76: Oh yeah! I wanted "quirky" - and you brought it ! Excellent nod to Elon Musk & his latest whim. It's obviously where this car was born to end up. What fun! Thank You
dlneubec: something very similar to our first entry. Car-focused. Great job of sharpening up & capturing those water-drops without getting too "cooked" along the way. Your use of the fog vignette seems to be an advantage in this one. It sets apart the darker shade of red that you ended up with. (that background was pretty dreary to start with) it also ties in with the foggy headlamps & windscreen. Nice job.
So - lets pick a winner. My top choices (in no particular order) are Uncle Vanya's classy B&W, fizzio for keeping the ground in there, tuggie76 - BECAUSE!, & dlneubec's fine job on the car.
***WINNER*** this round: UncleVanya and the classy B&W. (runner up is tuggie76)
Thanks to all for your great entries