Haze haze haze

cristianmiu · 12-10-2019, 04:30 AM

I use P, AV or M mode and this are my camera settings. Maybe i did something wrong... don't know... or maybe i just need more from the camera and in this case i should make an upgrade.

I have seen raw files before. The only problem that on my k3 are underexposed and when i PP i need to increase the exposure with 1-2 stops and from there everything goes in a wrong direction.

Later edit:

Some underexposed raws.
And another thing, same shot scenario, sometimes close the aperture at f10 and the second shoot close the aperture at f4.0. From my opinion is a huge bug on a semi-pro camera regarding the light measurement. Because, from here starts everything... from the light sensor measurement. On shots where you got bright sun, clouds, sea, mountains, even the sky is white or the face of the subject is black or you got a lot of bluehaze on the background...

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Last edited by cristianmiu; 12-10-2019 at 04:52 AM.

steephill · 12-10-2019, 05:26 AM

Possibly the most important piece of information missing so far is which metering mode are you using? Spot, average, matrix? Each of those will give different results.

If you can post a typical problem image with full exif data preserved it will help identify possible configuration errors.

pschlute · 12-10-2019, 06:05 AM

I note you are using Custom menu 3/21 Color Space 2. That is AdobeRGB I presume? While that will only affect your jpeg output from the camera, I would suggest you reset that to default sRGB, unless you have a specific reason for choosing that wider color space.

The middle of those new images does look underexposed compared to the rest I agree. Is this the one where the camera chose a much slower aperture ?

But you could open those raw files in 10 different raw converters and you will get 10 different default results, before you started moving the sliders or pick a profile like the Huelight one. Raw files need to be processed.

**rogerstg** · 12-10-2019, 06:13 AM - **1 Like**

Originally posted by cristianmiu

Maybe i did something wrong... don't know... or maybe i just need more from the camera and in this case i should make an upgrade.

Without the exif info, the comparison photos are not analytically useful. Nice composition skills though.

cristianmiu · 12-10-2019, 07:06 AM

Originally posted by steephill

Possibly the most important piece of information missing so far is which metering mode are you using? Spot, average, matrix? Each of those will give different results.

If you can post a typical problem image with full exif data preserved it will help identify possible configuration errors.

I use multi segment with 'link exposure to focus point off' .

DeadJohn · 12-10-2019, 10:55 AM

The 3 portraits you just posted looks like everything worked well. They are backlit; the subject is in shadow with sunlit clouds and a lightly colored building in the background. That's tricky lighting and leaves tradeoffs of an underexposed subject or an overexposed background.

Underexposure is often a good choice, which you and your camera settings provided ("before"), and then you adjusted it with processing ("after").
An overexposed photo with blown highlights can be much more difficult to correct.

Your photos of camera settings show "RAW+". That means you are getting a DNG (or PEF, depending on another setting) and a JPG version of every photo. How does the JPG file from the camera look? My suspicion is that it will look closer to your final result because the camera already does some of the processing for you. JPG offers much less flexibility than DNG for you to do further processing, though.

cristianmiu · 12-10-2019, 02:03 PM

The jpeg doesn't look very good. The image is slightly unexposed and have a red/magenta tint... I look again on the photos from my last holiday... from what I see, the pictures taken with 35mm/2.4 are ok most of them. The pictures taken with 16-50/2.8 is a mess. Hazy and wierd exposed...

I will buy a CPL filter, maybe it will cut the haze and increase the contrast.

Another thing, what good lens can you recommend me?
I look for sharp, bright and accurate colours...

I was looking at:
Sigma 35/1.4
Sigma 30/1.4
Sigma 18-35/1.8
Pentax 55/1.4
Sigma 17-17/2.8-5.6
Pentax 18-135

I also own an sigma 70-300 and I was thinking to.replace it with pentax hd 50-300...

Thanks guys!

Bertrand3000 · 12-10-2019, 02:27 PM

Originally posted by cristianmiu

Another thing, what good lens can you recommend me?
I look for sharp, bright and accurate colours...

I was looking at:
Sigma 35/1.4
Sigma 30/1.4
Sigma 18-35/1.8
Pentax 55/1.4
Sigma 17-17/2.8-5.6
Pentax 18-135

I also own an sigma 70-300 and I was thinking to.replace it with pentax hd 50-300...

I would recommend the Pentax 18-135, and the Pentax HD 55-300.

wanderer2 · 12-11-2019, 03:18 AM

I may have missed it but I haven't seen a haze reduction "filter" such as those now common in photo editing software, mentioned. FWIW, If it's actually atmospheric haze in landscapes I've found that a polarizing filter and haze reduction in post processing can make a large improvement.

cristianmiu · 12-11-2019, 06:23 AM

I guess i will need some filters on my lens. Out there on the market are lots of brands. In the past i was happy with carl zeiss filters and heliopan. I also used cheap hoya, but honestly i haven't seen an improvement and are very hard to clean.
There are also great brands like BW but i understand that most of them are fake.
What is your opinion? Does the brand name maters ? Does a UV haze 2B or a skylight affects in any way the picture on modern DSLR?

What makes a picture good? The camera or the lens?

Thanks!

**rogerstg** · 12-11-2019, 06:46 AM

Originally posted by cristianmiu

Does a UV haze 2B or a skylight affects in any way the picture on the modern DSLR?

Yes, they can introduce vignetting, flare, weird color shifts, random artifacts.

Bertrand3000 · 12-11-2019, 06:55 AM

A cheap filter will cause two types of problems : flare is the most common, and vignetting if it's too thick and the focal length is short.

What makes an image? Lens, filter, sensor, processing (in camera for stock jpeg, with a software if you use raw).

I recommend that you stick to jpeg, use bright mode, a hood to reduce flare, underexpose a bit, used bracketing to take the same shot at different exposures, and try a polarizer.

steephill · 12-11-2019, 07:12 AM

Originally posted by cristianmiu

What makes a picture good? The camera or the lens?

The photographer.

Filters won't solve your problem, exercising your skills as a photographer will. In your portrait examples linking AF and AE points would have helped with getting a better initial exposure. Your camera doesn't know that you want a face in shadow to be properly exposed so it will try to balance exposure to give an average result. For sunlit landscapes that may be fine but for subjects in shade with a bright background it won't. Camera automation is biased towards some notional average exposure which fails for many subjects.

Practice and learning the lessons which that brings will make you a better photographer than any change of camera or lens. As a basic step look at the histogram of each shot after taking it. There is a good reason you see pro's "chimping" as it is known. They are checking to see if they got exposure, focus and composition right and if any of those is wrong will adjust settings and retake the shot immediately.

cristianmiu · 12-11-2019, 07:21 AM

Here are few of my photos: Life trough Pentax Lens | Flickr

I'm not a beginner. This is not my first pentax camera or my first DSLR. I'm just looking for suggestions for improving landscape photography and to avoid making the same mistakes. I haven't find that JPEG settings that could make me smile... that's why i'm struggling with raw files.

**rogerstg** · 12-11-2019, 10:13 AM

Originally posted by cristianmiu

Here are few of my photos: Life trough Pentax Lens | Flickr

I'm not a beginner. This is not my first pentax camera or my first DSLR. I'm just looking for suggestions for improving landscape photography and to avoid making the same mistakes. I haven't find that JPEG settings that could make me smile... that's why i'm struggling with raw files.

Having looked at your photos, they are very good. Clearly you have talent. Perhaps several issues are being conflated.
- A few photos seem underexposed: it could be settings or an intermittent mechanical issue. As stated multiple times, exif info is the first place to look.
- Working with RAW files seems new to you since many of the "problems" seem perfectly fine. Drab is where they start, leaving their processing up to you. The more you work with PP software, the quicker and better you get.
-The only mistake I can see is that you like the over processed Nikon D3300 jpg photo.

(meant to elicit a chuckle). OTOH, photos you've processed are better.

12-10-2019, 10:55 AM	#21
DeadJohn Pentaxian Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: New York Posts: 4,833	The 3 portraits you just posted looks like everything worked well. They are backlit; the subject is in shadow with sunlit clouds and a lightly colored building in the background. That's tricky lighting and leaves tradeoffs of an underexposed subject or an overexposed background. Underexposure is often a good choice, which you and your camera settings provided ("before"), and then you adjusted it with processing ("after"). An overexposed photo with blown highlights can be much more difficult to correct. Your photos of camera settings show "RAW+". That means you are getting a DNG (or PEF, depending on another setting) and a JPG version of every photo. How does the JPG file from the camera look? My suspicion is that it will look closer to your final result because the camera already does some of the processing for you. JPG offers much less flexibility than DNG for you to do further processing, though.

12-11-2019, 06:23 AM	#25
cristianmiu Junior Member Join Date: May 2015 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 33 Original Poster	I guess i will need some filters on my lens. Out there on the market are lots of brands. In the past i was happy with carl zeiss filters and heliopan. I also used cheap hoya, but honestly i haven't seen an improvement and are very hard to clean. There are also great brands like BW but i understand that most of them are fake. What is your opinion? Does the brand name maters ? Does a UV haze 2B or a skylight affects in any way the picture on modern DSLR? What makes a picture good? The camera or the lens? Thanks! Last edited by cristianmiu; 12-11-2019 at 06:32 AM.

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12-10-2019, 05:26 AM	#17
steephill Pentaxian Join Date: Nov 2018 Photos: Gallery Posts: 585	Possibly the most important piece of information missing so far is which metering mode are you using? Spot, average, matrix? Each of those will give different results. If you can post a typical problem image with full exif data preserved it will help identify possible configuration errors.

12-10-2019, 06:05 AM	#18
pschlute Moderator Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Surrey, UK Photos: Gallery Posts: 8,198	I note you are using Custom menu 3/21 Color Space 2. That is AdobeRGB I presume? While that will only affect your jpeg output from the camera, I would suggest you reset that to default sRGB, unless you have a specific reason for choosing that wider color space. The middle of those new images does look underexposed compared to the rest I agree. Is this the one where the camera chose a much slower aperture ? But you could open those raw files in 10 different raw converters and you will get 10 different default results, before you started moving the sliders or pick a profile like the Huelight one. Raw files need to be processed.

12-10-2019, 06:13 AM - 1 Like	#19
rogerstg Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Rhode Island Photos: Albums Posts: 1,168	Originally posted by cristianmiu Maybe i did something wrong... don't know... or maybe i just need more from the camera and in this case i should make an upgrade. Without the exif info, the comparison photos are not analytically useful. Nice composition skills though.

12-10-2019, 07:06 AM	#20
cristianmiu Junior Member Join Date: May 2015 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 33 Original Poster	Originally posted by steephill Possibly the most important piece of information missing so far is which metering mode are you using? Spot, average, matrix? Each of those will give different results. If you can post a typical problem image with full exif data preserved it will help identify possible configuration errors. I use multi segment with 'link exposure to focus point off' .

12-10-2019, 02:03 PM	#22
cristianmiu Junior Member Join Date: May 2015 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 33 Original Poster	The jpeg doesn't look very good. The image is slightly unexposed and have a red/magenta tint... I look again on the photos from my last holiday... from what I see, the pictures taken with 35mm/2.4 are ok most of them. The pictures taken with 16-50/2.8 is a mess. Hazy and wierd exposed... I will buy a CPL filter, maybe it will cut the haze and increase the contrast. Another thing, what good lens can you recommend me? I look for sharp, bright and accurate colours... I was looking at: Sigma 35/1.4 Sigma 30/1.4 Sigma 18-35/1.8 Pentax 55/1.4 Sigma 17-17/2.8-5.6 Pentax 18-135 I also own an sigma 70-300 and I was thinking to.replace it with pentax hd 50-300... Thanks guys!

12-10-2019, 02:27 PM	#23
Bertrand3000 Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2019 Posts: 2,009	Originally posted by cristianmiu Another thing, what good lens can you recommend me? I look for sharp, bright and accurate colours... I was looking at: Sigma 35/1.4 Sigma 30/1.4 Sigma 18-35/1.8 Pentax 55/1.4 Sigma 17-17/2.8-5.6 Pentax 18-135 I also own an sigma 70-300 and I was thinking to.replace it with pentax hd 50-300... I would recommend the Pentax 18-135, and the Pentax HD 55-300.

12-11-2019, 03:18 AM	#24
wanderer2 Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2016 Posts: 301	I may have missed it but I haven't seen a haze reduction "filter" such as those now common in photo editing software, mentioned. FWIW, If it's actually atmospheric haze in landscapes I've found that a polarizing filter and haze reduction in post processing can make a large improvement.

12-11-2019, 06:46 AM	#26
rogerstg Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Rhode Island Photos: Albums Posts: 1,168	Originally posted by cristianmiu Does a UV haze 2B or a skylight affects in any way the picture on the modern DSLR? Yes, they can introduce vignetting, flare, weird color shifts, random artifacts.

12-11-2019, 06:55 AM	#27
Bertrand3000 Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2019 Posts: 2,009	A cheap filter will cause two types of problems : flare is the most common, and vignetting if it's too thick and the focal length is short. What makes an image? Lens, filter, sensor, processing (in camera for stock jpeg, with a software if you use raw). I recommend that you stick to jpeg, use bright mode, a hood to reduce flare, underexpose a bit, used bracketing to take the same shot at different exposures, and try a polarizer.

12-11-2019, 07:12 AM	#28
steephill Pentaxian Join Date: Nov 2018 Photos: Gallery Posts: 585	Originally posted by cristianmiu What makes a picture good? The camera or the lens? The photographer. Filters won't solve your problem, exercising your skills as a photographer will. In your portrait examples linking AF and AE points would have helped with getting a better initial exposure. Your camera doesn't know that you want a face in shadow to be properly exposed so it will try to balance exposure to give an average result. For sunlit landscapes that may be fine but for subjects in shade with a bright background it won't. Camera automation is biased towards some notional average exposure which fails for many subjects. Practice and learning the lessons which that brings will make you a better photographer than any change of camera or lens. As a basic step look at the histogram of each shot after taking it. There is a good reason you see pro's "chimping" as it is known. They are checking to see if they got exposure, focus and composition right and if any of those is wrong will adjust settings and retake the shot immediately.

12-11-2019, 07:21 AM	#29
cristianmiu Junior Member Join Date: May 2015 Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 33 Original Poster	Here are few of my photos: Life trough Pentax Lens \| Flickr I'm not a beginner. This is not my first pentax camera or my first DSLR. I'm just looking for suggestions for improving landscape photography and to avoid making the same mistakes. I haven't find that JPEG settings that could make me smile... that's why i'm struggling with raw files.

12-11-2019, 10:13 AM	#30
rogerstg Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Rhode Island Photos: Albums Posts: 1,168	Originally posted by cristianmiu Here are few of my photos: Life trough Pentax Lens \| Flickr I'm not a beginner. This is not my first pentax camera or my first DSLR. I'm just looking for suggestions for improving landscape photography and to avoid making the same mistakes. I haven't find that JPEG settings that could make me smile... that's why i'm struggling with raw files. Having looked at your photos, they are very good. Clearly you have talent. Perhaps several issues are being conflated. - A few photos seem underexposed: it could be settings or an intermittent mechanical issue. As stated multiple times, exif info is the first place to look. - Working with RAW files seems new to you since many of the "problems" seem perfectly fine. Drab is where they start, leaving their processing up to you. The more you work with PP software, the quicker and better you get. -The only mistake I can see is that you like the over processed Nikon D3300 jpg photo. (meant to elicit a chuckle). OTOH, photos you've processed are better.