Are the lines sloping out from the setting sun digital artifacts? We only had one evening at Sunset Beach in Cape May, NJ; there were no clouds to help make an interesting sunset shot but I took lots of pictures anyway. When viewed later on my monitor I noticed these lines on all the shots which varied according to the darkness of the image. I have posted one and I had also posted one recently in the Weekly Challenge gallery. The image posted here had no processing (other than resizing to post) done to it. It is a JPEG image shot with a Canon Rebel T1i. Lens was a Tamron 18-270 lens; I think I had my polarizing filter on also.
If it is an artifact, is it considered a "no-no" in photography? (I actually liked the way it helped in the comp of several shots.) Does the quality of the camera and/or lens affect whether this happens?
I'm not a very technically-oriented person so any "education" is appreciated.
Your camera did the processing to make the original jpeg, and if you used one of the lower quality settings to produce a aaa file with few Kb that could explain what you are seeing. Instead of getting very smooth color transitions across the sky you are seeing some posterization (i.e., color banding) as the jpeg compression algorithm in your camera tries to make the file size smaller.
But I agree with John that this looks mostly like a natural sunset. The brighten of the light falls off the farther you get from the bright sun.
This is a good learning experience in my opinion Carolyn, first off I think the image looks fine you done a very nice job framing, composition and it is exposed very well. As time goes on and experienced garnered from hundreds and thousands of images taken one will understand and in many ways know what to expect from their equipment thus things like this won't necessarily raise questions of is it right or wrong, it simply is what it is.
As far as a no-no you mentioned, I have strong opinions on that. I am one that believes in the personal creativity of photography rather than the attempt of documenting a specific scene. With that said only you can say if it is a no-no- or not. If you don't like it, it would be, if you like it then it's fine.
Right, those aren't artifacts, those lines (which to me look great in the shot leading your eye to the sun!) are a result of the limited 8 bit compressed jpeg format. If you did want your sky smoother without banding of sudden shifts in intense light, you have to shoot RAW so you can capture the full 14-bit data that your camera produces. When you open it in Camera RAW or the Canon DPP software, it'll give you a choice of opening it as 8 or 16 bit, and of course you want 16 bit which your 14-bit image data will nicely fit into, with some headroom to spare (side note: RAW data is actually 15-bit with the 16th reserved for the alpha channel, but who's counting, lol). Anyway, if you shot this scene RAW, opened it up in 16 bit with either AdobeRGB or the even-larger ProPhotoRGB colorspace and did your editing, your sky would be way smoother. However, in this shot, it works for me, nicely done!
JSYK, the one bad thing about shooting JPEG is that your T1i is still capturing a full RAW image file and instead of writing it to your SD card, it quickly applies sharpening and saturation based on your Picture Style setting, then the camera squishes the image down to 8 bit (by throwing away image data) and the converts it to a jpeg which compresses it (throwing away more data), and THAT'S what gets written to your SD card... and the RAW data is discarded permanently. For vacation shots that's just fine, you get auto-edited spruced up shots baked and served for you, but for any serious landscape work you probably want to save the RAW file and edit that. The RAW image initially will look pretty bland, but you'll quickly see that you can push or cut saturation and sharpening and exposure and everything quite far. The files are bigger but cards are amazingly cheap these days. When I got my first DSLR in December 2005, a 4GB card was $350, seriously... today I bought a 32GB SDHC card for $9.99 after rebate, so card space isn't the issue it used to be which is nice!. Start by having the camera store jpeg and RAW if dealing with RAW isn't of interest right now, but down the road if you start getting more into editng you'll have the full image data to be able to go back to. I did that for a while, then eventually started shooting all RAW and havenlt looked back.
Thanks so much for your responses, everyone! My comfort zone and passion is in close-up photography so I feel a little out of my element in landscape type shots.
Brad, you are right this is a good learning experience! Those sun rays were a first for me and I wasn't sure if it looked natural. I especially appreciate your affirmations encouraging me to define my own vision and not be swayed by what may be considered "right" or "wrong".
Paul, your response has been extremely helpful and given me much to think about. I have resisted shooting in RAW and have so far, felt good about the images I have been able to produce. Especially since at this point my photography is just a passionate hobby. However, I really do need to experiement with RAW so I can make a more intelligent choice of whether it works for me. I do know of even some pros who do not shoot in RAW although they are definitely in the minority. It would have been interesting to be able to compare this (high quality setting) JPEG shot with a RAW shot to see the difference.
Discussion
5 repliesIf it is an artifact, is it considered a "no-no" in photography? (I actually liked the way it helped in the comp of several shots.) Does the quality of the camera and/or lens affect whether this happens?
I'm not a very technically-oriented person so any "education" is appreciated.
But I agree with John that this looks mostly like a natural sunset. The brighten of the light falls off the farther you get from the bright sun.
As far as a no-no you mentioned, I have strong opinions on that. I am one that believes in the personal creativity of photography rather than the attempt of documenting a specific scene. With that said only you can say if it is a no-no- or not. If you don't like it, it would be, if you like it then it's fine.
Have fun...
JSYK, the one bad thing about shooting JPEG is that your T1i is still capturing a full RAW image file and instead of writing it to your SD card, it quickly applies sharpening and saturation based on your Picture Style setting, then the camera squishes the image down to 8 bit (by throwing away image data) and the converts it to a jpeg which compresses it (throwing away more data), and THAT'S what gets written to your SD card... and the RAW data is discarded permanently. For vacation shots that's just fine, you get auto-edited spruced up shots baked and served for you, but for any serious landscape work you probably want to save the RAW file and edit that. The RAW image initially will look pretty bland, but you'll quickly see that you can push or cut saturation and sharpening and exposure and everything quite far. The files are bigger but cards are amazingly cheap these days. When I got my first DSLR in December 2005, a 4GB card was $350, seriously... today I bought a 32GB SDHC card for $9.99 after rebate, so card space isn't the issue it used to be which is nice!. Start by having the camera store jpeg and RAW if dealing with RAW isn't of interest right now, but down the road if you start getting more into editng you'll have the full image data to be able to go back to. I did that for a while, then eventually started shooting all RAW and havenlt looked back.
Hope all that helps!
Brad, you are right this is a good learning experience! Those sun rays were a first for me and I wasn't sure if it looked natural. I especially appreciate your affirmations encouraging me to define my own vision and not be swayed by what may be considered "right" or "wrong".
Paul, your response has been extremely helpful and given me much to think about. I have resisted shooting in RAW and have so far, felt good about the images I have been able to produce. Especially since at this point my photography is just a passionate hobby. However, I really do need to experiement with RAW so I can make a more intelligent choice of whether it works for me. I do know of even some pros who do not shoot in RAW although they are definitely in the minority. It would have been interesting to be able to compare this (high quality setting) JPEG shot with a RAW shot to see the difference.