A Little Ray of Sunshine

[Ken Hadfield]

Taken at Antelope Canyon Arizona .

After a very bumpy 1 hour ride over the sand dunes you arrive at this spectacular location.

Antelope is a slot canyon which allows shafts of light to show through the canyon walls giving a very special light show.

Canon 1DMk 4

Canon 16-35 2.8 Lens

F/8 -0.3

HDR processed 3 x images

ISO 400

[Don Railton]

Hi Ken, Wonderful location you have here..! quite spectacular light, colour and curves and that shaft of light is wonderful.. Its not as crisp as I might have expected however, and I am not sure if its a hand held image that has introduced movement or a HDR processing issue. Not done a lot of HDR so will hold for others to comment on that. I think you could crop some off the bottom, this will reduce the number of those pesky footprints and place more focus on that wonderful light beam in my opinion.. DON

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ken, the colours are awesome, but thought there would be more change in the overall colours, with yellows, oranges, reds etc? The reason I say that is that we have a similar image hanging in our hallway (20x30). Again, like the bear, I do feel the lack of detail & clarity is missing a little, it's more like 'shapes of colour with little tonal range to give form' if that makes sense. I'm not sure if the HDR has given this effect and or as Don mentioned, being HH has not helped?

TFS
Steve

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Ken,

great image here. I agree with Steve with the colors. But I am not a HDR person, so cannot say much on that side.

Ciao

Anette

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Ken - first thing that jumped out at me is that it doesn't appear as sharp as it should be. I'll leave the colors to the others because I'm not on my calibrated monitor. Maybe start off by processing one of the images rather than the HDR and see how that is.

TFS,
Rachel

[Diane Miller]

That is a spectacular setting and you got a great capture of the light beam.

Is this the in-camera HDR? I tried it (with the 5D3) and found that in almost all cases I could do much better with the middle exposure, using the Highlights and Shadows sliders in the raw converter panel in LR. The Art Vivid setting is easily matched (or exceeded) by using the Vibrance slider nd some Clarity. You have so much more control in LR / ACR than in the camera for things like this.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Ken, lovely scene with lots of great suggestions mentioned already. I am thinking it may also be best to go back and try processing just one of the images to see what you can achieve. Love that ray of light!

[James Fuller]

Nice job not blowing out the highlights on the floor...I had trouble with that when I went. What a great place to photograph...wouldn't mind seeing a version with more blacks.