Hello everyone! This will be my first post to the forum. I am very much a newb to CS and my skill set is pretty limited right now. I am confident with help from all the fine folks here I will soon get much better. This image is from this past weekend at Triple Falls near Jasper, AR. I was blessed with great cloudy and rainy conditions, and lots of water. This is the outflow stream from Triple Falls with a glimpse of the main falls in the distance. What I liked about this was the composition and color. What I did not like was the foreground rocks' lack of sharpness. That is a focus issue on my part. I am sure there is a lot that could be done to make this image better so let me have it.
After posting I can also that ther should have been some other type of sharpening expressly for the Web and these smaller images...if someone could point me to some info on that I would be much obliged.
Bob Wyatt
Posted by Wayne Rhodus on April 8, 2009 at 9:51 PM
Hi Bob, welcome to CSNP! So glad you decided to join us. There is a great group of photographers here, willing and eager to help. And most importantly they are all great people.
Nice first post to the forum. I had my introduction to this location last spring during our annual gathering. I like how you composed this with the stream bound rocks leading into the frame and the distant triple falls. The size of the falls isn't readily apparent but there are elements that give hints.
As to your sharpening question here is a basic approach that should get you started. After you have finished optimizing your image in CS, resize the image to 72 ppi for web display and set your long dimension to 720 pixels. Convert to sRGB if you haven't already then select Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. I usually start with the Threshold set to 3, Radius set to .5 or .6 and then adjust the Amount as to taste (usually under 90).
That should get you a good amount of sharpening without going overboard. There are tons of techniques out there and a guy named Marc Adamus has a highly regarded technique that you can use.
Hope that helps. Make sure to add your contact info to the thread at the top of the forum and I'll get you added to the members page. Looking forward to seeing many more.
Hi, Bob, welcome aboard. Nice take on triple falls. As Wayne pointed out there are many good techniques for optimizing your pictures for the web. Here is a link to script from Dr. Brown's Web site. It is available for CS3 and CS4 both in Mac and PC versions. If you use this it will automatically convert and resize you photos. This is especially usefull when doing large groups of photos.
You can even set an action for sharpening or just do each photo individually. Wayne's suggestions for sharpening are about the same as I use. The only difference is I use Smart Sharpen in place of Unsharp Mask. Try both and see which one you like.
Hey Bob welcome. I really like those two big rocks in the foreground. It is nice to see a fresh take on a waterfall that is photographed so much. It sounds like you understand your issue with the foreground rocks not being sharp enough. Although at this size they are sharp enough for me to still like them.
Personally with those rocks so close and the falls so far away I would have probably shot this at at least f/16 . I think it is ok to have a little diffraction creep in. I would rather everything be in focus and a little soft, than something out of focus. Just my (very young) opinion.
Wayne (or anyone else for that matter) on your resizing instructions, do I really need to resize to 72ppi then set the long to 720px? I always just change the long to 720px without the 72ppi step. Does it really matter? A lot of this computer stuff is over my head.
Welcome Bob. You've definitely got a good start. Is the sharpness due to downsizing for the web? I could be wrong but It looks like it might be out o focus or lack enough DOF.
I love extreme foreground perspective with a wide angle lens and this is a great example of that. You often need to stop down the aperture to f16 or more to get the foreground and background in sharp focus. No amount of sharpening will be able to correct that. Rather than guess and learn by trial and error you should consider learning how to calculate DOF using what is known as hyper-focal distance.
Basically; for any focal length, sensor size, and aperture the hyper-focal distace is the closest focus point that still includes infiniti. If it is 10' then your image will be sharp from half that distance (5) to infinity. It takes only a few tries to learn it and it works great. A prime lens (non-zoom) will usually have it printed on the lens but you won't find tat on the 17-40L (great lens BTW).
Google hyperfocal distance and you will find all the information you need.
Welcome aboard Bob. You will obviously find lots of folks here with quite a bit more knowledge than I have regarding computer programs etc. And they are more than willing to help. You're off to a good start and improvements will come quickly as you post.
Welcome Bob! I like your composition here, but as you know there are some issues with sharpness. It appears to me that there is some water flowing immediately behind the front part of the FG rock on the right, where the image seems reasonably sharp to me. I don't think this is all a DOF problem, but may be part of it. You might also use the DOF preview button that stops down the aperture to whatever it's set at, allowing you to get a better idea of what will be in focus and what won't. Just to be safe, I always zoom in on the critical areas in the image after shooting to make sure I've got sharpness where I want it.
Posted by Aaron Szabo on April 10, 2009 at 9:14 PM
Nice first post! There is a lot of good tips here. I think part of the blurry rocks may also be because the water running over it is not 100% clear.
Discussion
9 repliesCanon 40D
Canon 17-40 L
F11 @ 0.4 sec ISO 100
Bob Wyatt
Nice first post to the forum. I had my introduction to this location last spring during our annual gathering. I like how you composed this with the stream bound rocks leading into the frame and the distant triple falls. The size of the falls isn't readily apparent but there are elements that give hints.
As to your sharpening question here is a basic approach that should get you started. After you have finished optimizing your image in CS, resize the image to 72 ppi for web display and set your long dimension to 720 pixels. Convert to sRGB if you haven't already then select Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. I usually start with the Threshold set to 3, Radius set to .5 or .6 and then adjust the Amount as to taste (usually under 90).
That should get you a good amount of sharpening without going overboard. There are tons of techniques out there and a guy named Marc Adamus has a highly regarded technique that you can use.
Hope that helps. Make sure to add your contact info to the thread at the top of the forum and I'll get you added to the members page. Looking forward to seeing many more.
http://www.russellbrown.com/scripts.html
You can even set an action for sharpening or just do each photo individually. Wayne's suggestions for sharpening are about the same as I use. The only difference is I use Smart Sharpen in place of Unsharp Mask. Try both and see which one you like.
Personally with those rocks so close and the falls so far away I would have probably shot this at at least f/16 . I think it is ok to have a little diffraction creep in. I would rather everything be in focus and a little soft, than something out of focus. Just my (very young) opinion.
Wayne (or anyone else for that matter) on your resizing instructions, do I really need to resize to 72ppi then set the long to 720px? I always just change the long to 720px without the 72ppi step. Does it really matter? A lot of this computer stuff is over my head.
I love extreme foreground perspective with a wide angle lens and this is a great example of that. You often need to stop down the aperture to f16 or more to get the foreground and background in sharp focus. No amount of sharpening will be able to correct that. Rather than guess and learn by trial and error you should consider learning how to calculate DOF using what is known as hyper-focal distance.
Basically; for any focal length, sensor size, and aperture the hyper-focal distace is the closest focus point that still includes infiniti. If it is 10' then your image will be sharp from half that distance (5) to infinity. It takes only a few tries to learn it and it works great. A prime lens (non-zoom) will usually have it printed on the lens but you won't find tat on the 17-40L (great lens BTW).
Google hyperfocal distance and you will find all the information you need.
Bob Wyatt
Jonesboro, AR.