American Basin

Ok, so I'm about five months late on processing, but here is an image from my first trip to American Basin this summer. C&C welcome especially for any processing improvements.

Canon EOS 20D, 1/4 sec, f/16.0, ISO 100, 28 mm, no filters.

Cheers.

Nice composition, nice light, beautiful place - but the depth of field is really bothering me on this one. To me, the background ought to either be sharp, or be really out of focus. This one's right in-between sharp and OOF.

Of course, that's easier said than done sometimes, especially if you want everything sharp! I see you were already at f/16 - I suspect the lens didn't have any more stops than that? A T/S lens might help, or perhaps blending two or more images with different points of focus.

My 2 cents, for what they're worth...

Erik

I like the composition, definitely. Looks like you had some unflattering skies that day, and I might try to darken the lighter part of the sky (particularly on the right side). You could also try a vertical crop with the columbine staying in the LLC, but then you'd lose some of the midground flowers.

A smaller nit would be that the greens have a bit of a yellow tinge to me, but that might just be my monitor.

Composition is very nice, as are the fg flowers - but like Erik the DOF bothers me, I think for this composition to work the background peaks need to be in focus. I'm surprised that for f/16 and 28mm even the Columbines in the field are oof, hyperfocal distance is approx. at 5 feet (for full frame), so theoretically everything between 2.5 feet and infinity would be in focus if your focus point was beyond 5 feet. Did you have the camera on a tripod?.

I have to echo the DOF line of thought; the background peaks should really be in focus or so blurred as to disappear into the background (my opinion, of course). The composition leads your eye right to them, and then...blur. Pretty place, I've got to get up there next summer.

dan

Thanks guys for your helpful responses. There was quite a bit of wind which made it hard to use a smaller aperture and a longer exposure to keep some flowers in focus. Although I could've upped the ISO now that I'm thinking about it. If I remember correctly, I may have focused on the columbines rather than using hyperfocal focusing... Perhaps another trip there is in order.

I think it could work with this aperture setting, but only if the only oof portion wasn't relegated to the far lower left corner. This is one image where, if the flowers were right in the lower middle, centered below the oof American Basin Crags, it would work.