Fall Color

[sdaj]

When in thumbnail, this photo looks stunning. When blown up it loses some of it luster and not sure why I have this opinion. [sorry for the link, DPS is not letting me upload for some reason]

Any thoughts?

20111001-DSC_4340 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[oldwolf]

This would help immensely.

Critique Forum Rules

[milosh]

When in thumbnail, this photo looks stunning. When blown up it loses some of it luster and not sure why I have this opinion. [sorry for the link, DPS is not letting me upload for some reason]

Any thoughts?

20111001-DSC_4340 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Hello and welcome!

First of all, please follow the rules as the previous poster said and edit your post accordingly.

Now about your photo: I'm not exactly sure what do you mean when you say that it loses its luster...It's a very nice photo, and it's the kind of photo that needs to be viewed whole to fully appreciate it. Perhaps you were trying to zoom in too far on the photo and as a result, you lost it's composition.. Or were you perhaps referring to its sharpness?
The photo is a bit blurry and that was probably caused by hand holding the camera and shooting with a too slow shutter speed (0.3 sec). You should use a tripod when shooting with such slow shutter speeds. One more thing, there was no need to use f18 here. At apertures smaller than f16, diffraction starts to occur, which impairs your image quality.

[Krusty79]

Posting Photos from Flickr [July 2010 Update]

You're supposed to include your exif data also.

I would reshoot this later in the day when the sunlight is not so harsh. You have some dark areas with very little detail, so shooting later in the day should reduce the dynamic range of the scene. Nice shot, though.

[sdaj]

Thanks for the feedback, and I now appreciate the forum guidelines and will follow more closely.

1. I do believe sharpness is an issue. I would make a nice 8x10 but larger is not possible. So how would you have taken the shot to maximize sharpness and still have focus on the trunk which was ~ 5 to 7 feet away with tree top ~ 35 feet and 1-3 mph winds?

2. With respect to lost dynamic range, I shot at 3:30 PM when light was sill above the tree canopy. This also created a backlit leaves adding to the brightness but agree with lost detail. I tried some shots at the golden hour but the leaves appeared orange to brown (makes sense when you think about the light spectrum and which colors are filtered first.) What recommendations would anybody have with time of day and/or processing and still maximizing the yellow and tonal range in the photograph?

EXIF data

Tripod with shutter release
lens hood (forces 30mm or greater zoom without blockage)
ISO100
32mm
1/3 sec shutter
RAW then minimal processing and crop in Lightroom





Here are the stats on the photo

1. Shot with tripod although wind was ~1-3 mph
2. Nikon D80, 18-135mm lens

[Krusty79]

I think the answer to your first question can be found here.

I'm not sure about your 2nd question though. I would not want to lose the golden colors and I hesitate to recommend HDR. I don't know if you shot RAW, but if you did, you could make one jpg for the brighter areas and one for the darker tree trunk and blend the exposures using a layer mask. I think the main thing is to keep those golden colors and if the tree trunk loses some detail, I don't think it's that big of a deal.