Photos

tyro (2666) 2009-09-17 14:29

Hello, Peter.

Firstly, a very fine picture with an incredible amount of detail within it. I like the boats all lined up and the line of red buoys which leads the eye to the right but also nicely fills an otherwise blank piece of water. Excellent details and sharpness in both pictures in the trees and houses in the background.

Now, you have set us a real poser here. I think, but only think, that I prefer the original picture in this case because it has just a little more "punch" and is a little more contrasty and saturated though with good details throughout both the lightest and darkest parts. The workshop picture has a slightly "washed out" look, but only a very, very little.

What makes the choice of favourite picture and also what makes the decision as to which camera took the shot more difficult is the fact that you admit to having manipulated the colours in one or both to make the skies as equal as possible. By doing so, because you used a polariser on the Fuji, I expect that you have reduced the blue/cyan saturation on the Fuji picture (the Fuji does tend to be a little heavy on blue/cyan anyway) and/or increased the blue/cyan saturation in the Canon shot.

That still doesn't answer the question as to which camera took the shot. I said that I preferred the original picture to the workshop one but part of the reason is also that the workshop picture has water reflections that are perhaps just a tad too bright. That leads me to think that the workshop photo was taken without a polariser and is therefore the Canon shot, the original one being from the Fuji.

Do I get a coconut?

Irrespective of whether I win a coconut or not, I was thinking when I saw your other pictures of this harbour, that the Fuji does appear to be a little heavy on contrast and perhaps struggles to cope with the dynamic range with which the little Canon appears to cope quite well. At first, I wondered if this might have been due to the increased number of pixels and so an increased pixel density in the Fuji, but this is not, in fact, the case. Check this.

I don't know if you took many pictures in RAW, but it might be worth seeing what benefits might be achieved in doing some editing in RAW before conversion. Such as reducing contrast a little to reclaim some more information from very dark and very light bits. I'm not sure. The RAW editor in PSE6 has a number of very useful features such as "recovery" which can recover a lot of detail from overexposed bits of sky, "fill light" which can show detail in underexposed shadows and so on. Just a thought.

Anyway, Peter, as I said before, this is a very fine picture and the added feature of a stiff quiz has added to its appeal. Would that more people here would make the effort to post things like this so that we could all start to think a little more about our photography!

Kind Regards,

John.

Glint (3042) 2009-09-19 3:47

Hello Peter,
a charming scene as there is something especially nice about messing about with baots (if only to take pictures of them).I'm sorry but I read your note to late to take part in your challenge (I cheated and read your answer). But I wouldn't have been able to guess anyway as I am rbbish at the technical side of photography. I either like something or not and intuition tells me why or not.
Like John, I like the little bobbing red bouys. Their red picks up on the red of the lighthouse and one or two other ed things that I can't identify.Colours and exposure are fine and dandy.
regards,
Bev