Pacific Waves & Snow on Hills.

[Ian McHenry]

I love being by the sea and it is a special bonus when the waves are rushing to shore.
Deatails: Pentax K10D with Tamron 70-300 @ 260mm plus Tamron 1.4 Tele-converter.
400 ISO 1/750 sec @ F8 multi-segment metering.
Comments welcome.
Ian McHenry
http://www.pbase.com/ianmc

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Ian,
The power of the waves really comes through on this image. I may have preferred a bit of dark water at the base of the frame on the left.........but you still have composed some very nice layers. colors look a bit off as does the sharpness a bit. At that speed.....motion shouldn't have been an issue so may be it is a PP one. Overall... very nicely composed.

[Ian McHenry]

Thanks Roman.
Lots of good points in your comment.
Here is the full frame image with slightly different PP.
Cheers: Ian Mc

[Arthur Morris]

Good advice by Roman. In the repost, you need to crop from 1/2 way up the dark on the foreground left. Lack of sharpness is the biggest problem... I like the waves and the inclusion of the complete mountains.

[Douglas Bolt]

I'm not sure I've improved Ian's image, but I thought I'd share my PP approach.

I used a combination of Robert's suggestion for Linear Burn (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18261) and Art Morris's suggestion (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17876) (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/%28http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17876%29) using Select/ColorRange/ then Highlights followed by Linear Burn on the highlights.

In this example, I used Select/ColorRange/Select three times to select either highlights, mid-tones or shadows followed by Ctrl-J. That made three separate layers to work on individually - highlights, mid-tones and shadows. Blending was Linear Burn for highlights, Multiply for midtones and Screen for shadows.

I'm sure there are probably easier/faster/better ways to make separate layers for the highlights, mid-tones and shadows, but this approach seemed to work well.

Thanks to Robert and Art.

[Arthur Morris]

Wow Douglas! The re-post is a huge improvement, like magic.

[Ian McHenry]

Thanks Artie and Douglas.
Douglas: Excellent work to bring out the essence of this image.
Really appreciate your PP and advice of your workflow.
Great job on bringing out detail and sharpened image.
Cheers: Ian Mc

[Douglas Bolt]

Thanks, Ian. I had neglected to mention that I did some selective sharpening at a much reduced brush opacity to bring out some details in the mountains and in what appears to be seaside village. I use PKSharpening for sharpening, but Smart Sharpening or USM on a separate layer with a mask should accomplish the same effect. I like PKS because it does most of the work for me.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Ian,
Here's an example of what I was talking about and a different method. The biggest difference is that i cropped it where I was recommending. Adjusted color in the blues.......+10.........Shadow highlights........shadow 20 amount........20 tonal width.........radius 30..........highlights 40..........50........30.........1 round of noise ninja........sharpened. Just more possibilities.

[Arthur Morris]

Wow. Roman's re-post is even stronger. I love the color work and the perfect crop from the bottom. Way to go bro!

[Ian McHenry]

Thanks Roman. Better & better !!!
Artie's crop suggestion has certainly improved the balance of the picture.
Really like the whiter whites and deeper blues.
I'll post the original unedited image to show how much it's changed thro' Photo shopping !!!
Ian Mc

[Ian McHenry]

Here is original image.
Resized but otherwise unedited.
Cheers: Ian Mc

[Robert Amoruso]

The look of the powerful waves and BG mountains is a nice contrast and balances well together. Ian you have gotten some good comments on improving the image but when I look at this yesterday morning I first noticed the lack of sharpness in the image. The problem is when creating landscape images with long lenses, your compressed depth of field really hinders you and you have a lot of depth in this image.

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner but busy vacuuming water out of my carpet yesterday and pulling out wallboard (Tropical Storm Fay).

One thing I want you to check out. John Hendry’s excellent resource at http://www.johnhendry.com/gadget/dofcalc.htm. You will want to use the “Hyperfocal Distance Calculator” – see the screen shot below to calculate your Hyperfocal Distances. I did it for the set-up you used here and the results are "Focus at 1386 ft 2 in for sharpness from 693 ft 1 in to infinity". To use this you need to know the Circle of Confusion (0.020 for your Pentax) and you can get that here http://www.dofmaster.com/digital_coc.html.

To create your maximum DOF you would focus at 1386 ft and DOF would be 693 ft to infinity - basically focusing at infinity. Things closer then 693 ft would not be sharp. Now if you letting the camera focus and it picks up a wave and that is say 400 ft from the camera, your near focus limit is 310 ft and the far focus limit is 561 ft (from John Hendry's website link above and using the Near & Far Focus Limit Calculator to find this). So anything further away is OOF.

If you used f/22 your near focus distance is 252 ft - much better then 693 ft.

In these situations, it is best to use a tripod and focus manually to get your best DoF and not let the camera figure it out.

Another thing to try here to overcome the DoF issues is to create two images, one focused on the mountains and one on the waves and merge them in PS.

Good reference for explanation of Hyperfocal Distance is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hyperfocal_distance&oldid=228250731.

Another thing I suggest, you say Tamron 70-300 @ 260mm plus Tamron 1.4 Tele-converter. Is the 260mm from the meta-data and if so does it incorporate the tele-converter. In BBPro it would which means at 260mm you could have created this image w/o a TC - my recommendation.

If you have any questions, let me know. I am working on a Hyperfocal Distance Tutorial but it is not quite ready for posting.

[Ian McHenry]

Wow.
Thanks Robert.
So much to read up on and absorb re correct focussing.
The 260mm on meta-data is the focal length without the 1.4 Tele-converter addition which never shows in "image properties".
I really have to make an effort to slow down when taking scenics which is so different from my fast panning to get birds in flight shots.
Really like that point about problem of AF on a particular wave throwing image sharpness O.F.
Hope your home is recovering well from TC Fay.
Cheers: Ian Mc

[Arthur Morris]

While Robert's solution and advice is right on, it is not always practical. If you are in a hurry like me you can always use One-Shot AF, focus about 1/3 of the way into the frame, and let er rip... Works for me <smile>

[Ian McHenry]

Thanks Artie
How did you know I was rushing along the beach to catch a bus !!!
Problem is I spend so much time on trying for bird pix that don't leave enough time to meet the rough sea challenge !!
Will have to work out a formula. LOL. ( Walking time to destination Plus X no images @ 2mins per image0
Ian Mc