Wawona

I recently(10/27) camped at Wawona, Yosemite for the first time. This is taken at sunset just behind the campground. I like this photo.... but i did not do the right job. Picture looks bad when seen at 100%. I am not sure i lost this picture to [1] diffraction or [2] Hyper Focal Distance. I focused on the foreground rock and its sharp (thinking it would be at 1/3rd frame, that would be enough to get HDoF). Any suggestion/help would be greatly appreciated.

NikonD70, 18-70mm @18mm, f22, 4s, ISO200.

Thanks,
Murali

here is the 100% crop.

woah, that 2nd image looks very odd! Like some sort of photoshop filter. I'd say something is wrong, for sure. Great looking image otherwise, nice blend of blue and orange/pink colors!

Thanks for the help Daniel, here is the one from RAW, i used screen capture. photoshop might have made it more bad.

is it possible that the D70 just doesn't have enough resolution to get small detail in the tree? f22 on the kit lens sounds less than ideal as well. Those are my two best guesses. perhaps you could include a crop of the rock as well so there is something to compare sharpness with.

Murali,

What it looks like to me is that you might have processed the image twice once for the sky and once for the FG and dark areas. That is ok, nothing wrong with that, but it looks like that you have over processed and thus are getting halos coming through in the blend. I have seen that before when I have tried doing such blends with fine detail like the tree branches.

Thanks for helping me, Richard and Youssef.

I have bracketed this shot. But did not use the other two shots, just processed from one. Applied aggressive curves adjustment with masks. After reducing the curve it looks quite ok. But there is no real details. May be because of light quality or because of wrong focus, i do not now. If its due to my mistake, i would like to learn to use it right. Here is the crop from +2 exposure.

I'm not a PS expert so I can't help ya there...
I don't know how far that lens stops down, but if that is the max,
usually lenses are not the sharpest at their max...
but I loved your image and I hope you won't let this mar
your enjoyment of your 1st time in Yosemite!!
The image is lovely even if just at this size......

Thanks Nelcha !! I did visit Yosemite before but never stayed more than couple of hours (used to take one day drive from Bay Area).