Post your PHOTOS! - January and February 2023

😄 Glad I could help. Have a wonderful day.

Deleted -> DPR closing down.

I shot this tonight - for me it's an exciting shot as I feel it pushes the absolute limits of the M system in several ways.

It was pushed in DxO Photolab 6 fully 4 stops to ISO 51,200 --- then had some shadow enhancement which pushes parts of it even higher. I used Deep Prime XD de-noise which did an amazing job.

It was shot with the Laowa 9mm f2.8 lens at f2.8. This lens is quite sharp and can 'do' low light photography well, like the Roki 12mm f2, Canon 32mm f1.4, and the Siggy trio.

It was shot in a sequence of 14 frames-per-second in order for me to pick the frame with the best composition. From previous experience I knew I had to shoot at 1/250 second to freeze the front of the train --- even with a 9mm lens.

I have also done some perspective adjustment with VIewpoint 4 to adjust the angle of the building and train for composition. I even stretched the lower right part of the frame outside the border using VP4 so that I could use more of the right side of the frame.

One trick I used was to export the image to full-res TIF --- then continue processing the much cleaner image before downsampling to 4k. Shooting at ISO 3200 gave me more than 3 stops extra dynamic range to work with --- from experience I know that if I had shot this image in-camera at ISO 51,200, it would have been pretty messy and I wouldn't have been able to get a result as good.

CSX local train Y295 GO BUCS! on the downtown Tampa Polk Street run. Canon M6ii, Laowa 9mm f2.8 lens, f2.8, 1/250s, shot at ISO 3200 (underexposed 4 stops), pushed past ISO 51,200 using DxO Photolab 6 with Deep Prime XD de-noise

That looks like half a train, or a very skinny train?

jim mij wrote:

That looks like half a train, or a very skinny train?

Excellent point, due to the perspective and using the ultra-wide, only half the engine's front was visible.

I found one which has a more natural perspective, and the crop is better -- showing more of the train and the skull in the Bucs sign. I also did not perspective correct it until I worked on the second TIF file after the de-noise operation --- that got rid of some artifacts in the black of the sign.

M6ii, Laowa 9mm f2.8 lens, 1/250s, ISO 3200 in-camera pushed to ISO 51,200 in DxO PL6

👍

This last photo was taken later.  A couple of friends and myself riding in the Mojave.  Friend, Eric, standing with his KTM 500.

Hi Digirame,

Of course, I believe you!  lol.

It really is a beautiful place but one that should be visited as you mentioned at some other time than summer.  It is not often that water from the Mojave River flows above ground, so it was a special treat to see that.

Perhaps it is time for you to come back for a visit and a little hike.  We would give you a first rate tour!  Have you been to Rainbow Basin and the Black Mountains?

Here is another photo from our hike in Afton Canyon.

All shot with M100

EFM 22mm f2

EF 40mm f2.8 + Meike adapter

EF 40mm f2.8 + Meike adapter

EFM 22mm f2

Very nicely done.  I especially like the third one.

Hal

Thanks for posting those. I particularly like the third one as well.

Nice that you posted the full resolution shots, they show off how sharp this lens is. Especially being an ultra-wide, it does extremely well. Objects at this focal length can be so small that the sharpness really matters.

Most consumer-grade lenses are very slightly decentered if you pixel peep extremely close. My copy of the Laowa has a softer right side than left. Your copy is quite good, it's hard to tell but the extreme left side might be slightly less sharp than the right.

I found with this lens that the center is not always the same focus as the corners, that is to say it has some slight field curvature. Sometimes I'll shoot the same scene and alter the focus slightly, or I will examine the focus at 10x magnification and move the focus box around the frame to get the optimal focus point.

Over time, I've gotten to know where to set the focus on the manual scale for the aperture and type of shot I'm doing. This is one of the advantages of a manual focus wide lens for landscapes --- once you get to know the lens, you can pre-set the focus very quickly and not worry about the focus any more!