My sunflower photos

After seeing the potential and copying the fine directions from here the other day, I decided to drive up to the sunflowers at 87th and Woodward in Longmont on Monday. I wasn't disappointed in the flowers or the sunset. However, I continue to be disappointed and frustrated with my Olympus E3 low-light performance in my sunset shots. Unfortunately, that's what I'm stuck with unless I find a full-time job or a big inheritance...
The one warning that I have about sunset there is that the mosquitoes were brutal!
Here's my late-morning shot with the clouds still hiding the mountains in the background.

Jim Bennett
Highlands Ranch, CO

Here's my first sunset photo of the same field.

Jim Bennett
Highlands Ranch, CO

Here's my second sunset photo. I thought that I caught Jerry in this photo, while he was out in the field taking closeups, but I can't find him in the photo. It certainly would have made a great "where's Waldo" shot! Maybe he is there and I just don't see him?

Jim Bennett

Here's my third sunset photo... I was going to try processing these as HDR, but I'm finding that the noise after processing to just be intolerable. These were just adjusted a lot from the raw file.

Jim Bennett

Meanwhile, this was going on behind us at the same time. I hate it when that happens! While I was debating about taking my camera off of the tripod on top of my car, the partial rainbow was fading from those beautiful clouds.

Jim Bennett

Nice set, Jim! I like the second sunset shot the best. If you can find a way to brightne the field a bit in the last sunset one, it would be great. The first one posted has a bit of a halo around the hills/trees. Looks like a productive shoot!

I also liked the second sunset image , the clouds have a wonderful color in the third sunset shot.

We are heading up there as it stands this evening!

Thanks for the feedback. I tried brightening up the foreground of the third sunset, but it makes the noise look even worse. I'm suspecting that part of the noise problem could have been caused by me using the live-view feature with the camera on the the tripod on top of my car while I used a remote release. It probably overheated the image sensor. Regardless, none of the sunset photos are of a quality that I would print because of the noise. Like I previously wrote, I'm very disappointed...

My vote goes to the 2nd Sunset image too, they all look a little over-processed to me though. I think you have the Sunset one close though, the sky certainly cooperated for you!.

haha, great to meet you last night Jim. I can't find myself in the photos thank goodness! You woulda thought the BRIGHT red shirt would have given my location away (apologies again for that). I like the 3rd one out of this bunch, and the last one would be great if you could get the noise under control. The noise is strange, you shouldn't be getting that much unless your ISO was bumped up? One time I mistakenly bumped up my ISO for star shots, then forgot I had adjusted it. I shot the whole next day wondering why ALL my shots were grainy and overexposed even at my fastest shutter speed Lesson learned the hard way for me...

Looks like you got some great skies Jim, and the sunflowers look great!

These all strike me as being sharpened and/or manipulated to within an inch of their life, but I'll bet the original files have everything you need to make some first-class images. They've got good bones.

Exactly what Todd said.
All prime candidates for shooting two exposures and then blending in postprocess.

The last two sunset photos were originally shot with ISO bracketing for HDR, because of the dynamic range issue with the sky. However, the resulting noise that I ran into made HDR impossible and the flower details also went away with the high noise level from only ISO320. I ended up using just one of the raw files for each edited photo, but the noise is the same in each file because of the way that Olympus creates the ISO bracketed files. In this case, these small files posted here actually hide the worst problems that make the sunset photos worthless for anything bigger than a 4x6 print. It was also a 1/4 second exposure, which may have made the noise issue even worse because of the higher f-stop I used for the better d-o-f. I don't remember any breeze, but any movement could also have killed my flower detail.

Like we all do, I'll just learn from this experience and try again... I just wish it wasn't over an hour away from home. Thanks for the feedback.

Jim Bennett
Highlands Ranch, CO

Nice set!

Jim, so when you bracket exposures with the Olympus, it changes the ISO rather than the exposure time? That's a new one for me? I am used to the camera keeping the ISO and DOF the same, and bracketing the exposure times to harness the dynamic range, not the ISO. If you're getting that much noise with an ISO of 320, I would keep my ISO at the lowest possible setting at all times and either bracket the exposures in camera if possible, or you can even do it manually remembering to work quickly if you have moving clouds/changing light etc. I remember seeing some older photos you posted from Roxborough and they didn't seem to have the noise problem visible here, so I guess it's just knowing your camera's limitations, working within them, and like you said, learning each time you go out. That's a real bummer you made the drive up etc. and didn't get the quality you wanted, but it'll make that shot even sweeter when you do finally get it! Also, you could try to run this through a noise correction program like Noise Ninja or even LR3. If you don't have these programs, hold onto these files and rework them down the road if you do end up getting some SW. It's great to process old "throw-away" photos with new and improved SW. Good luck!

I've figured out that the Olympus ISO bracketing feature creates three files from a single shot by processing all three files based on the highest ISO setting relative to what the camera is set for. (My camera was set for ISO 200, because it can't bracket below ISO 100.) That means that all of the noise added from the highest ISO is exactly the same in the "lower ISO" files. The only thing that I've found that ISO bracketing is great for is making HDR photos of moving objects, like waterfalls. ( I also have the option of shutter and aperature bracketing for stationary shots using multiple shots, which I'll probably use next time.)
Anyway, I'm getting off topic, so I'll just leave it at that...

Jim Bennett
Highlands Ranch

Jim, I've used Olympus cameras for a while and have never found anything good about ISO bracketing. Maybe some other Oly users can help us out but to me the feature is basically useless. Like the others have said, just use aperature priority and alter your shutter speed for bettert results in bracketing. Good luck, our sunflowers are all way past their prime.

I like the color and clouds in #4. The haloing in #1 bothers me.

I like #3 and #4. And a little more work on #4 and it will be a great shot.

Thanks for the encouragement Morris. Unfortunately, those sunset photos are really beyond hope of salvaging. The noise and poor detail in the flowers that remained after I adjusted the heck out of those photos just doesn't show up in the small files that we upload here.

I'm thinking about going back there Thursday morning and trying again at sunrise, when the lighting should not be nearly so extreme. I'll also forget about using that worthless ISO bracketing on my Olympus ever again!

Jim Bennett
Highlands Ranch, CO
Olympus E-3

Nice set of images, Jim. Congrats on a productive shoot.

Bill Brennan