[RICHARD L.]

I don't hate it, but there are artifacts around the tree leaves. Looks a little like rust making paint "bubble". Is it something to do with adjusting file size? Or perhaps sharpening?

The colors are punchy. Reminds me of Pro photographer Mitchell Funk. I like Funk's work.
Thanks,
barondla

Thanks,
barondla

Thank you for helping me, barondla ! In the original display on my Mac, there are no artefacts in or around the leaves. I noticed that when you post an image on the Pentax Forum, it is automatically downsized and this may be the reason a halo appears around the edges of contrasting objects. I was curious to know if a polarized sky seems acceptable in a landscape picture. I think it is more appropriate when used in a "mineral environment" such as the Arizona Desert where an intense blue sky fits very well with red rocks, for example (complimentary colors), and creates sort of an abstract score. Maybe not so much in a forested Eastern-type environment, as blue and green don't go together so well. I usually try to avoid polarizing "too much", just enough to slightly remove reflections.

Regards

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Last edited by RICHARD L.; 08-17-2020 at 05:45 PM.

[w2ck]

Hi,

Yes, the forum software downsizes all the way to 1280 x 1024 and a max size of 1 MB. So, that'll put artifacts onto edges. Starting out with 50 MP and going all the way down there, there are many opportunities for odd things to show up.

The polarizer really deepened the blue of the sky. Makes it look like a super form of Kodachrome. And, now I will have a song stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Stan

[RICHARD L.]

Thank you, Stan. I was really afraid my "deeply polarized" pictures would look garish or ridiculous. Western landscapes shot with a CPL look realistic because we know the humidity level is very low and the sky is naturally bluer while in the East the high relative humidity tends to lighten up sky tones. Maybe this could be considered like a personal "signature" or "style". Fall colors lend themselves to polarization, yellow and orange leaves set against a cobalt blue sky create a nice combination.

Regards

[barondla]

Thank you, Stan. I was really afraid my "deeply polarized" pictures would look garish or ridiculous. Western landscapes shot with a CPL look realistic because we know the humidity level is very low and the sky is naturally bluer while in the East the high relative humidity tends to lighten up sky tones. Maybe this could be considered like a personal "signature" or "style". Fall colors lend themselves to polarization, yellow and orange leaves set against a cobalt blue sky create a nice combination.

Regards

Never thought of east vs west sky. Not saying it doesn't exist, but to me the earth has one sky and it can change its appearance constantly. I think polarized eastern sky is fine. Many of the landscape masters shot in B&W and thats not exactly natural. Look at photographers using color infrared. It's all art, not a scientific atmospheric survey☺.

Thanks,
barondla

[kaseki]

Most soft-focus lenses allow to dial in spherical aberration.

Not my favorite approach. I like the kind of soft focus that adds a subtle halo around sharp details. The best purely optical solution I’ve seen was the Zeiss Softar, which is a flat filter with bumps glued to it. The space between the bumps renders a sharp image, and the bumps add the soft effect. I can also do it in Photoshop with a duplicate layer filtered with a Gaussian blur, with the transparency turned up to allow the sharp image to come through.

I had a Canon soft-focus lens that used spherical aberration. It fell apart, but I didn’t miss it and never had it repaired.

But I also have to admit that intentional soft focus is an effect I find too conspicuous most of the time.

Rick “the Cokin approach might be okay” Denney

Thanks for the info. I still have to dig out my Coking filter, but my memory is that it has the effect of degrading fine resolution. The plastic surface dimples, which are positive protrusions, must be messing with the higher frequency end of the PSD function. Faces became smoother without the boudoir haziness. [Something some 4k TV personalities might want to use.] I think I used this filter on some portraits in the '80s with a friend's 645, or else my Nikon FG. My memory is hazier than the photos were.

[barondla]

Thanks for the info. I still have to dig out my Coking filter, but my memory is that it has the effect of degrading fine resolution. The plastic surface dimples, which are positive protrusions, must be messing with the higher frequency end of the PSD function. Faces became smoother without the boudoir haziness. [Something some 4k TV personalities might want to use.] I think I used this filter on some portraits in the '80s with a friend's 645, or else my Nikon FG. My memory is hazier than the photos were.

The black dot & Tiffen black net filters also reduce fine detail without causing halos or spilling light into the shadow areas. They kind of make modern lenses look a little more like film lenses. Not necessarily bad considering medium formats ability to reproduce hyper detail.

Thanks,
barondla

[johnha]

Dragonfly with a D, this critter visited my garden a few days ago (first time I've been able to get a shot of one). I used my D with FA 80-160 (cropped), handheld for expediency - had I known it was going to sit there sunning itself for ten minutes or so I'd have gone for my 67 135, tubes and a tripod. As far as I can identify from the web, it's a variation of Common Darter:

[RICHARD L.]

A guy specializing in insect close-ups here used a chemical spray that knocked them for a few minutes so they would stay still and facilitate camera adjustments. I don't know exactly what this chemical was but it gave him an edge against skittery critters.

Regards

[mikeSF]

Dragonfly with a ...kr

refreshing subject matter - great execution - thanks for posting!

[ivanvernon]

645Z and Pentax-D FA 55mm f 2.8.

[photoptimist]

Thank you, Stan. I was really afraid my "deeply polarized" pictures would look garish or ridiculous. Western landscapes shot with a CPL look realistic because we know the humidity level is very low and the sky is naturally bluer while in the East the high relative humidity tends to lighten up sky tones. Maybe this could be considered like a personal "signature" or "style". Fall colors lend themselves to polarization, yellow and orange leaves set against a cobalt blue sky create a nice combination.

Regards

I liked your bluer-than-blue skies but am familiar with the problem of polarizers and some skies.

Up at 14,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, a polarizer can turn the sky a very unnatural blue-black if the atmospheric conditions are right (or wrong depending on how you look at it). I'd imagine it's an issue with some high mountain skies in different parts of the world that have little humidity or dust to scatter sunlight.

[texandrews]

I liked your bluer-than-blue skies but am familiar with the problem of polarizers and some skies.

Up at 14,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, a polarizer can turn the sky a very unnatural blue-black if the atmospheric conditions are right (or wrong depending on how you look at it). I'd imagine it's an issue with some high mountain skies in different parts of the world that have little humidity or dust to scatter sunlight.

When making photos in Turkey in 2005 on a family trip, I first noticed a "problem" with polarizers I had never had before. This was the first time I was using one with a digital camera---an Oly C8080, king (then; Sony's RX10 wears that crown now, years later...) of the digicams. My skies looked very unnatural with the polarizer. Without, they looked a lot like polarized images I used to get with film. So, I have mainly stopped using them until very recently, and now solely to cut reflections from museum cases or glazed flatworks shot in situ.

I suppose I may pull them out again if I get into a series of water shots of a certain type, or for images I know beforehand I will convert to B+W. But now in digital I don't feel like I need them anymore for color work...

[RICHARD L.]

Thank you for your wise advice. I don't use polarizers too often because I fear getting this garish unnatural look. But I will use one this fall when Maple leaves turn yellow. Blue and yellow are the only two colors I'm certain of because of my f***ed-up color vision ... like Van Gogh, I guess.


Regards

[w2ck]

Hi,

The usual case when I use a CPL is at the race track. The road course to be precise. I want to see the driver behind the windscreen, so I use the CPL to allow that. Now, that also means picking my spot on the track with something in the background to use as a trigger point. I manually focus for that spot, and set the CPL for that spot in that light - and have fun panning and shooting. Kind of a PIA way to go, but I get what I was after in the end.

Of course, this goes with the above comment about dialing out reflections. It isn't a MF use for me, wanting a smaller, lighter rig. But, who knows? I might just get to a road course with the 645D and give it a whirl. Maybe not this year. It's been weird and I have been to no tracks at all.

Another place I use polarizers is with my microscope. Linear ones. One is fixed in front of the objective, the other can rotate and is in front of the ringlight. They work to allow dark areas to become light, and light areas to become dark. What they call DF/BF (darkfield / brightfield). The idea is to get the light just so to make the item of interest glow like it was a neon sign. Then, I take a photo. But, again not MF. That camera is an ancient APS-C 2 MP one. But, the scope does all the real work and the camera is to document what I see. And, 2 MP fits in a email nicely.


Stan

[rdenney]

Thanks for the info. I still have to dig out my Coking filter, but my memory is that it has the effect of degrading fine resolution. The plastic surface dimples, which are positive protrusions, must be messing with the higher frequency end of the PSD function. Faces became smoother without the boudoir haziness. [Something some 4k TV personalities might want to use.] I think I used this filter on some portraits in the '80s with a friend's 645, or else my Nikon FG. My memory is hazier than the photos were.

It will certainly reduce contrast at all spatial resolutions, and that will undermine the appearance of detail. But most of what it removes is the surgical part of surgical sharpness.

It sounds like the Cokin has a similar design to the Softar. That’s good to know.

The Zeiss Jena 180/2.8 has a bit of under-corrected spherical aberration, which I think is why it renders such beautiful bokeh. Wide open, it degrades the contrast if fine detail enough that skin tones no longer appear choppy, and I have never really wanted more softness than that. But at that focal length and aperture, the image gets out of focus in a hurry as subject matter moves away from the focus plane, and that makes the stuff in focus appear sharper. It’s a great combination of effects for portraiture.

Rick “who likes spherical aberration as a softening agent only in slight amounts” Denney