[Wheatfield]

I took the liberty of playing with your image. With your permission I will post it in this thread.

[Rondec]

I'm just going to say that I seldom use any aperture smaller than f8 on APS-C. Occasionally I'll use f11. You run into a lot of diffraction when you get smaller apertures and except if you are trying to slow your shutter speed down (not an issue here) or just can't get focus from your subject to infinity without stopping down more, there is little benefit.

With really wide angles you can use "hyperfocal" focusing, where you take a lens like the DA 15 limited, set the aperture at f8 and you can know that everything from 3 feet to infinity will roughly be in focus. The longer your focal length, the tougher that is, because hyperfocal distance with a 43mm lens at f11 is something like 20 feet.

[MrB1]

madison_wi_gal, are you hoping to get a final image from the camera every time? Even though I'm happy to shoot JPEGs (with a Pentax KP), I'm rarely completely satisfied with the SOOC image, so nearly always apply some moderate adjustments in post-processing. For your first image presumably you wanted a view of the town and, if so, the main problem is the viewpoint - the distraction of all those stems in the foreground. Other than that the image is rather flat but, in my view, it could be significantly improved even with some simple adjustments to contrast, local contrast, and saturation, together with some subtle sharpening. It would be interesting to see the results of Wheatfield's playing.

Philip

[madison_wi_gal]

I took the liberty of playing with your image. With your permission I will post it in this thread.

Sure!

---------- Post added 04-25-23 at 08:06 ----------

madison_wi_gal, are you hoping to get a final image from the camera every time? Even though I'm happy to shoot JPEGs (with a Pentax KP), I'm rarely completely satisfied with the SOOC image, so nearly always apply some moderate adjustments in post-processing. For your first image presumably you wanted a view of the town and, if so, the main problem is the viewpoint - the distraction of all those stems in the foreground. Other than that the image is rather flat but, in my view, it could be significantly improved even with some simple adjustments to contrast, local contrast, and saturation, together with some subtle sharpening. It would be interesting to see the results of Wheatfield's playing.

Philip

I think I overestimated the sharpness at distance of this (or any) lens. The one I posted sadly had the tree in the middle, and folks have been focusing (ha ha) on that, but all of the images had soft (blurred) houses and trees and bridges when I pixel peeped and I honestly thought I had a bad lens.

Now I know this:

I used a good lens under conditions that were unfavorable.

[Wheatfield]

Sure!

I didn't take a whole lot of time on this, maybe 15 minutes.
Here you go:

Apparently I managed to make a bad link. Look a couple of posts down.

[madison_wi_gal]

I didn't take a whole lot of time on this, maybe 15 minutes.
Here you go:

Where??

[clackers]

Glad it's worked out, MWG.

The first picture was always going to have haze in the background, and with no tripod the shutter speed was too slow - 1/50s.

Somehow you got away with spot metering, I guess the lighting was pretty gray and flat.

[Wheatfield]

Where??

Is it not in line with my reply?
Hmmm, for reasons unbeknownst to me....
It shows up in Chrome but not Edge.
I'll put it on my Flickr and link from there.

Here it is (again):

[madison_wi_gal]

Is it not in line with my reply?
Hmmm, for reasons unbeknownst to me....
It shows up in Chrome but not Edge.
I'll put it on my Flickr and link from there.

Here it is (again):

Thanks. Nice what a bit of PP can do to a cruddy image.
---------- Post added 04-25-23 at 19:21 ----------

I'm just going to say that I seldom use any aperture smaller than f8 on APS-C. Occasionally I'll use f11. You run into a lot of diffraction when you get smaller apertures and except if you are trying to slow your shutter speed down (not an issue here) or just can't get focus from your subject to infinity without stopping down more, there is little benefit.

With really wide angles you can use "hyperfocal" focusing, where you take a lens like the DA 15 limited, set the aperture at f8 and you can know that everything from 3 feet to infinity will roughly be in focus. The longer your focal length, the tougher that is, because hyperfocal distance with a 43mm lens at f11 is something like 20 feet.

Aaaaah. Learning is fun! So if Mister 15 had gone to La Crosse instead, I might not have started this whiny thread.

[Wheatfield]

Thanks. Nice what a bit of PP can do to a cruddy image.

Other than removing the foreground about all I did was crop out the sky, which I thought was MEH, and add a bunch of contrast.
I'm pretty shameless about photo manipulation. I have no problems with fixing it in Photoshop, though I try my hardest to not have to.

Also...
I suspect that f11 is smaller an aperture than will give sharpest results from that lens.
Here's an interesting exercise: take each of your lenses and photograph a newspaper page at every aperture. Check focus manually and don't refocus between shots.
If there is any focus shift from changing the aperture it will just be counted in with the result.
The idea is to know what aperture your lens starts to fail. The reason why is moot unless one stop down focusses, which will limit degradation to diffraction and will probably give a different result.
Now, look at each image and figure out the aperture it starts to go soft at.
After that, keep in mind that below that aperture you are starting to compromise sharpness and decide if you want to rethink your exposure settings.

[MrB1]

Perhaps I'm wrong but hasn't the lens captured the detail? Leaving the original composition as it is, the following modest adjustments were made:- reduce overall brightness; select everything below the sky; increase saturation and contrast; increase local contrast (Unsharp Mask: 30% and 30 pixels); increase sharpening (Unsharp Mask: 200% and 0.3 pixels).

Philip

[madison_wi_gal]

Perhaps I'm wrong but hasn't the lens captured the detail? Leaving the original composition as it is, the following modest adjustments were made:- reduce overall brightness; select everything below the sky; increase saturation and contrast; increase local contrast (Unsharp Mask: 30% and 30 pixels); increase sharpening (Unsharp Mask: 200% and 0.3 pixels).

Philip

Yes, I had uploaded a non-sharpened (not DxO'ed) image, DxO could have improved it but for some reason I expected I'd see sharp focus in the windows of the school.

[Wheatfield]

Yes, I had uploaded a non-sharpened (not DxO'ed) image, DxO could have improved it but for some reason I expected I'd see sharp focus in the windows of the school.

I suspect that by f11, the possibility of seeing sharp fine detail was a stop or two in the past.