Ocean Colors @ 32mm

M6 + 32mm f/1.4 + CPL filter - JPEG / Handheld - Av Mode @ f/9 - Terrigal, Australia

.
Sprained my left wrist and ankle by stepping off a 1m drop - whilst looking up instead of down on Wednesday morning as I walked down some stairs.  So i left my FF DLSR and heavy White lens at home and took the M6 with me to lunch instead.  Caught a nice shot of the Pacific Ocean from cliffside (above) before lunch with family.  Many years ago, I once found a Giant Pacific Octopus clinging to a rock underwater - almost exactly where the guy in the Kayak is paddling above.  Tried to try it off the rock but it's arms were as thick as my thigh and when I felt the strength of it I knew then to leave it well alone.  I once had a much smaller one grab my underwater camera (which was attached to my wrist with a strap) in Hawaii where I was snorkeling off Maui in the 1990s... and it let go as I was about to lose consciousness from lack of air.  Those things post a considerable risk because of their strength underwater. As a result, I won't ever dive without precautions and a knife.  I'd love to take the EOSM underwater but I can't see that happening with the current touchscreen design.
.

iPhone - Pausing for lunch

.
The light changed later in the afternoon with the sky turning uniformly grey and rare mammatus clouds forming prior the arrival of a storm.  I took a picture from the window of my car on the freeway as we attempted to get home before the storm broke.  It never eventuated but we're in the middle of a 3 week heatwave right now and damaging storms cut power to our home for several days in December 2018... about 2 weeks ago.  It will be 39C/103F degrees later today ...and the heat yesterday was crippling. It was 43C/109.4F where I was in the middle of the week.  Even today at lunch I had to buy food from a restaurant and then walk quite a distance to take it to a more efficiently air-conditioned mall to eat it.  The staff in the restaurant were ready to collapse.
.
Such is the way here in Australia these days in Summer.  I should be grateful not to be in the Western Australia goldfields where it routinely bounces around between 45C and 50C+ range at this time. Only fools detect or dig for gold there in the daylight hours at this time of year. It's too dangerous for me to head out to the bush here on the East Coast right now with all the bushfire warnings and excessive heat this week... But I digress...
.
I'm just sharing some images from this side of the globe for the winter-endurers here on the Forum that hale from the Northern Hemisphere.  You'll get your turn when the seasons change.  You might want to post a few snowshots for us!!  Enjoy your winter chill.  I have a colony of overheated ants pouring through a light fixture in my ceiling right now and the Kookaburras are stirring outside with the pending sunrise. 
.

M6 + 32mm + CPL - Pork Cutlet + Green Apple Sauce (shouldn't have shot @ f/1.4)

M6 + 32mm + CPL - down by the beach after lunch

M6 + 32mm + CPL - strange and tiny 8mm mothlike insect on my car (cropped)

M6 + 32mm + CPL - waves blasting through a hole in the rocks
M6 + 32mm + CPL - 6 hours later ... the sky filled with rare mammatus clouds.

M6 + 32mm - strange flower

M6 + 32mm - Spaghetti Gamberi
--
Regards,
Marco Nero.

Is there any noticeable color cast with the Hoya Fusion CPL?

Unless your cleaning these up in post, they look exceptionally good OOC.

marco you continue to be this lenses best advertisement ... well done

mp

marco the food still lives really shine and show why food bloggers will gravitate to the m with the 32, the clouds shot is well pulled off and tough one to do so,.... but the wave crashing shot with the girls on the beach really shows how impressive this lens is.. sharp fast great color rendition. and motion freeze all while maintaining such great depth of field ...great shot.

mp

Craig Smith wrote:

Is there any noticeable color cast with the Hoya Fusion CPL?

Unless your cleaning these up in post, they look exceptionally good OOC.

I haven't noticed a change to the color cast by the Hoya Fusion CPL ( https://hoyafilter.com/product/fusion_cir_pl/ ) when shooting in the city using Auto WB... until I saw your comment and decided to review the pictures I took this week.  Since buying the Fusion filter with the EF-M 32mm f/1.4 lens I've had no issues shooting with Auto WB but this week I chose to set my WB to Daylight for a change.
.
For the shots taken in the morning, I looked at the LCD on the camera and noticed an objectionable "slight-greenish" color when shooting with Daylight WB at the beach and so I immediately changed it to 'Auto WB'... which resolved the issue for me on the spot.  This change altered the amount of green showing up on the beach sand and shifted the hue of the sand in the scene towards magenta.  But of course, by using Auto WB the colors will shift as the camera calibrates the color differently for each shot.  A good example can be seen below where I reset the WB to AUTO...
.

UNEDITED* (other than a Curves adjustment to raise brightness).  No change to the WB.
Taken seconds apart.  Color shifts from Cyan (Left) to Magenta (Right)

Note the changes to Exposure and Aperture.  WB remains on Auto.

.
I think that using Auto WB was the answer because that's usually where my camera settings sit.  I'm just having fun with the camera/lens here but if I was taking an image for a magazine I'd have locked down the WB with a grey-scale card via a Manual WB setting.  The results from the City the other day were good using this WB setting. Whilst colors can usually be corrected, it's much better to get the best results immediately from the camera so there's little need to tweak the colors. With ocean shots, regardless of camera, filter or lens - I find myself adjusting color vibrancy more now than with Canon compact cameras that I've used in the past.  I used to see much more change from cheaper CPL filters with other cameras. But these days a decent quality CPL filter should be neutral in relation to White Balance. In fact there's a post on the Nikon forum from 2011 with a member stating that they prefer the Neutral ones for beaches.
.
I've noticed in the distant past (with other cameras) that I could use a single CPL filter on the same lens and get different shades of blue sky from different times of the day. Shots taken with the sun lower in the sky were always much warmer.   I certainly get a lot better results closer to the equator when visiting tropical destinations.  There seems to be quite a few things that can influence the results.  But I am wondering if I should do a manual WB setting (using a white or grey card) next time I'm using a CPL filter.
-
Regards,
Marco Nero.

J A C S wrote:

Marco Nero wrote:

M6 + 32mm f/1.4 + CPL filter - JPEG / Handheld - Av Mode @ f/9 - Terrigal, Australia

Shot with the 350D

Canon G1X + Hoya std CPL - same beach at Terrigal in April 2012 @ 28mm

Canon M6 + Hoya Fusion CPL - at Terrigal Jan 2019 @ 32mm (50mm equiv)

.
I photographed the same beach back in April 2012 after carefully planning for tide, sun location and clouds for scale. The sun would have been at a different elevation for April and changes to the water and weeds under the surface exist. My method of editing would have been more aggressive back then although one member here found the brighter image from the G1X to be against his tastes because he felt that the colors were too bright. 
.
Using the same editing methods via Lightroom and Photoshop, I was able to wring out a similar result from the most recent shot taken this week with the M6 + 32mm lens.   Some clouds on the horizon would have made a difference.
.
That shot taken with the 350 shows how much translucency is added to water shots by a CPL filter.  Those turquoise colors are beautiful.  I think there's some murkiness to the local water right now that doesn't help with my shots.  The growth of local seaweed is a little out of control and yet you can sometimes use it to help with an image (see below).
.

EOS 6D + EF 100-400mm II + Hoya std CPL filter  - same beach again
--
Regards,
Marco Nero.

Marco, I'd love to see your talents put to use outside of Australia (and NZ). Ever think of taking a photographic vacation in SEAsia or PNG?

Abu Mahendra wrote:

Marco, I'd love to see your talents put to use outside of Australia (and NZ). Ever think of taking a photographic vacation in SEAsia or PNG?

I traveled to those regions between Singapore, the Philippines and India when I was a teenager and had to borrow my mother's 35mm film camera for the one or two photographs taken back then.  I ended up getting shipwrecked at the age of 15 in the shallow waters of the Philippines and was later rescued by the Coast Guard.  The occasion of our boats breaking down and getting towed to shore during a distant tropical storm would have made for magical photographs. Luminous crustaceans in the water... the Milky Way overhead... hundreds upon hundreds of (presumably) dead sea-snakes washed up on the shore that were illuminated by lightning.  I sometimes think of just taking a trip there to take in the sights and appreciate the light.  I've noticed that the light in the sky, even in Canada, is quite different to that light here in Australia. The cloud formations are likewise more interesting to me when I travel.  For some reason the clouds in Canada seem to be flat-bottomed on some days in a manner that I never see here.  The waters North of the equator often seem more vibrant to me.
.
.
I used to travel a lot as a kid.. when I was interested in critters but not in photography.  My mother worked with World Vision so that took me across Asia to get to India and Bangladesh.  My old childhood friend from Scouts  still goes to India with a DSLR to capture the light and colors there.  And I got into photography much more around the time I met my wife.  Though I'd worked in Camera retail it wasn't until Digital cameras became available in the late 90s that I began to develop a more sincere interest in photography.  I haven't seemed to have had the opportunity to travel nearly as much since getting married in 2001.  My wife can't handle tropical environments (specifically heat) like she used to.  The gentleman with whom I worked with for the last few years would visit Cambodia and Vietnam whenever he could find the time.  He is a DSLR user and a former journalist and I often marveled at his work.  I was reminded on Egypt when he showed me pictures of the sunrises and sunsets in Cambodia.
.
Perhaps someday soon I'll have an opportunity to have someone house-sit my neurotic cats and I might travel again.