Is this 'operator error" or what ????

miles green said:

By HDR processing, i mean the lifting of shadows and saving the highlights. Sometimes, it destroys contrast in the mid-range and makes pictures look unsharp.

If you had the camera on a rock/trunk etc, and used the 2-second delay, without touching the camera at all, you shouldn't be getting any shake, especially with wide lens, or with very long exposures as with an ND400 filter

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Miles Green
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Ok ,understood on the post processing. Looking at all the images that were shot of this scene, either at 1/4 or 1/5 second and WITHOUT any PP adjustment of shadows/highlights reveals this 'softness' issue in every one. So maybe the camera was NOT rock solid steady and/or as some have mentioned the 'auto' high ISO noise filter I had engaged contributed to softness? I am not familiar with the 2 second 'delay'; I planted/steadied the camera and manually depressed the shutter. Another poster mentioned about 'activation' of the SR....although I did not note the 'hand' in the viewfinder at the time of this shoot, I do see in working at home that SR seems to 'activate' virtually immediately (i.e. green hand visible in viewfinder) upon focus lock.

Comments? / Thanks/Bill

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Bill / Oceanside, CA
www.billgosmaphotography.com

Didn't find if anybody already said it but usually, when you shoot landscapes, either using a tripod or a three, it's better to deactivate the SR or any kind of IS. Some stabilization system get confused and tries to stabilise the camera even if it is rock solid fixed, putting movement in the pic. That's why brands like Nik or CAN have so manny IS modes in theirs lenses. You have panning mode, action mode, tripod mode....

Don't know in the K3, but K5 returns better results with SR off when mounted in anything. Additionally, the 2sec timer automatically disable the SR, so you have additional sturdiness.

Also, as the modern DSLR's get higher and higher pixel counts, any kind of micro movements in camera will blur the picture because the increase in sharpness and detail will be more and more viewable as you zoom in as well as the blur itself.

Annyway, nice pic.

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wgosma said:

Holger Bargen said:

wgosma said:

Smitty1 said:

Impressive you handheld (even if supported) at 1/2 of a second.

It looks like high noise reduction (NR) or some kind of softening image compression is occurring at 1:1

Then again at 1:1 the images generally don't look nearly as impressive as they are at 1:2 or so.

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Interesting comment; camera is very new to me, tho I had K-5 experience. I did have the in-camera High ISO noise reduction set to 'auto'....hmmm, maybe that was the cause!

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I believe that it is the noise reduction. I remember that many people were not satisfied with the sharpness of the K3 - and a little later they recognized that the automatic nose reduction of the camera was very strong and could destroy details in the photos.

Did you shoot also RAW? - If so you could try to solve the problems in post processing as the noise reduction has only influence on the processing of the JPG within the camera.

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Yes, it was RAW capture w/camera set to 'auto' High ISO noise reduction (and noise reduction mode for long exposure); so if what you state about in-camera noise reduction affecting ONLY JPEG capture, this in-camera setting was not the issue causing problems here, correct? Or do I mis-understand your statement?

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As far as I understand the Pentax way, there is also some noise reduction in RAW - but this has nothing to do with the noise reduction you can select in the settings. So if your JPG was not generated by the camera, the settings of noise reduction had no influence on your computer.

What program did you use for processing the RAW file? I have DxO which makes nice corrections on photos of defined camera-lens combinations. Your lens is a very common one and it should be in the list, K3 also - I do not know if the program would accept RAWs from K3ii as this camera is very new and I do not believe that it is already on the list.

wgosma said:

wgosma said:

1/2 of a second is y long exposure time for a camera with a pixel density of the K3. I remember that I had to learn that the exposure times I used to work with in analogue days with my cameras were not short enough for my K5 - even though SR helps a lot.

Another question: Did you use shake reduction correctly? It works only if you press the release button half - wait till the symbol is shown in the display - and then it works for exactly one photo - thus, for series of photos it does not help anything.

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Not certain on the operation of the SR feature. Being that this shot took me a few moments to compose/steady the camera on a tree stump and fact that I believe I used auto-focus then I think likely the camera had sufficient 'time' to click-into (so to speak) SR mode, but can't confirm as I did not note status in the viewfinder.

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I had a look at your photo, again - I don't think that it is bad. If you want the full resolution from your camera, the conditions have to be perfect. I think that the quality you received at 1/2 sec. is very good.

If you like you can upload your RAW file so I could try to get a little bit more out of it in DxO 10. I would expect some major improvement - even though I am not an expert on postprocessing. The feature clear view could remove a little dust, there is a very powerful noise reduction tool, adding some microcontrast gives more sharpness - if there is not enough, unsharp masking may also help, if the camera-lens combination is on the list, you get the best that is possible - more sharpness, better bokeh, correction of distortion etc.

If you do not like to give your RAW to me or if you would like to test the program on ylur own, I would recommend to give the program a try - I would expect that a free trial version is available (for a month or so).

In summary: I do believe that your photo is already great! But I also see big options to get more out of it.

Best regards

Holger

wgosma said:

wgosma said:

wgosma said:

I did have a VERY steady support for the shot as I recall. Next time I pull out the tripod and turn off the shake reduction.....and the noise filters too

Thanks/Bill

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Bill / Oceanside, CA
www.billgosmaphotography.com

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Bill / Oceanside, CA
www.billgosmaphotography.com

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The error is in your expectations?

If you look at the ridge line and the house on the other side, they are very sharp, IMO, based on the original image you have linked. The stuff that seems blurry to me is the near field water and foliage - which will move over the course of 0.5 second. The penultimate of sharpness is not what you get from a hand held zoom lens.

Now if this were a good prime, on a tripod, low ISO, and so on, then you would have a complaint.

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BobORama said:

The error is in your expectations?

If you look at the ridge line and the house on the other side, they are very sharp, IMO, based on the original image you have linked. The stuff that seems blurry to me is the near field water and foliage - which will move over the course of 0.5 second. The penultimate of sharpness is not what you get from a hand held zoom lens.

Now if this were a good prime, on a tripod, low ISO, and so on, then you would have a complaint.

-- Bob
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http://www.vimeo.com/boborama/videos -- Videos
http://blog.trafficshaper.com -- Blog

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I posted as I was not clear on the cause(s) of the lack of sharpness, the camera is very new to me; the shot is pretty decent considering the relatively slow shutter speed and hand-held situation. I think I expected more but after reading comments and such that seems unrealistic given the conditions of me and the camera.

Look below....this is the yellow house on the shoreline in the far distance of the original photo; shot with Pentax 60-250 lens from a different location from the original lake sunset shot. Completely hand-held (no supporting tree stump, etc.). It's pretty decent but shows signs of what looks to me like blur from camera movement. Pulling up the sunset pic to 1:1 and looking at this distant shoreline and ridge line, well, it's all fuzzy, foreground elements also....it's 'fuzziness' looks different to me than the shot below, so I'm thinking it's more than just camera movement causing the problem but maybe not, maybe it's just the result of 'more' camera movement(?).

Had I not been lazy, failing to pull the tripod out of the car, both shots would have been improved.



Bill / Oceanside, CA
www.billgosmaphotography.com

Hi wgosma,

I'm a bit lost here ;-)

In general, if people are a bit consistent, then either (a) they use perfect technique and as a result, spend hours anguishing about even the smallest technical aspect of their shot, or (b) they don't use perfect technique, and knowing this they don't bother looking at 100%.

On the other hand, you have done just this: used 1/2 second, assume that leaning on a tree and IS would make it fine, but then you still want to anguish by looking at the tiniest detail. Come on! ;-)

Facing the sun, and perhaps without a hood, might not be helping.

But still: do the same with at least 1/200th and then we'll talk, shall we?

wgosma said:

Folks,

This photo is not as 'sharp' as I know it could be using this camera/lens combo; when I go 1:1 with the raw file in LR5 I can see it's 'off', just a tad bit.

Can you point me to the problem? (I have my idea but let me hear your unbiased input).

K3 II w/Tamron 17-50 lens

1/2 second exposure @ F/8

'handheld' with camera support on tree trunk or rock (I forget which)

I don't recall where I focused the camera

Shake reduction ON

Thanks/Bill



--
Bill / Oceanside, CA
www.billgosmaphotography.com

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wgosma said:

MightyMike said:

So thats 22mm at 1/2 a second... You're relying on just over 4 stops of IS for this shot

Now you might think that by supporting yourself you can get a more stable image, however without using a 2 second timer (which shuts off SR) the act of pushing the shutter button full down might be enough to cause motion blur in the image. Also assuming you have a very stable hold/support on the camera the SR itself may cause blur as its supposed to be turned off when on a tripod just for that reason.

You could have opened the aperture to F5.6 or even F4.0 and still got away with this shot, you could have increased the ISO to 800 and maybe could have pushed 1600 and still got a similar result, I'd prefer opening the aperture over the ISO due to DR or for that matter do a combination of the 2.

Given you didn't have a tripod just remember shots like these were not even possible handheld in the not to distant past.

One last thing, either your shadow lifting technique or your WB was off as the green on the lens don't look realistic to me

wgosma said:

Folks,

This photo is not as 'sharp' as I know it could be using this camera/lens combo; when I go 1:1 with the raw file in LR5 I can see it's 'off', just a tad bit.

Can you point me to the problem? (I have my idea but let me hear your unbiased input).

K3 II w/Tamron 17-50 lens

1/2 second exposure @ F/8

'handheld' with camera support on tree trunk or rock (I forget which)

I don't recall where I focused the camera

Shake reduction ON

Thanks/Bill



--
Bill / Oceanside, CA
www.billgosmaphotography.com

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Hi Mike,

Ok good info, thanks - good points. I did/do have a tripod....it was in the backseat of my car- shooting 'hand-held' here is called being old and lazy at the end of a long day Had I been a little more on the ball I would have shot w/larger aperture as I did note the long 1/2 second time, I think at the time I felt I'd lose sharpness for lack of depth of field if I opened up the lens, but as you say....with this short focal length I could have pulled it off- my error on that point.

I'm wondering about the other poster's comment about the high ISO NR filter?.....I don't consider ISO 400 to be 'high' but that is besides the point. I did have the camera set up with 'auto' for the high ISO NR function and maybe it played into this?

The green has been tweaked in LR; the camera captured w/WB set to 'daylight' (4900 / +5 tint if I'm correct); I wanted less blue/ more 'green' so I adjusted it to 4600 w/-16 tint. Plus green 'luminance' has been pushed to +20.....that could be what you've spotted?

Bill

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Bill / Oceanside, CA
www.billgosmaphotography.com

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I was just about to say the image looks pushed

I don't know what +20 means but you can guarantee one thing the image is no longer a ISO400 shot

You say you used 'auto' NR and the lightroom can I assume you have PP'd a Jpg ?

If so then camera + light noise reduction routines would reduce sharpness pushing and sharpening would increase noise (lower perceived sharpness)

and HH a 1/2 second shot have all the 'issues' Mike mentioned (SR induced shake if camera supported or HH induced blur if not)

also a 1/2 second exposure will blur water ripples and trees so in your image the only thing likely to be pin sharp is the pebbles and they are out of the DoF slightly so are blurred.

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