Dennisvile fog

[Dave Woeller]

Captured this early on a foggy morning a while back. tried to revive it a bit by removing some sign posts and poles in the grasses. I desaturated just a touch and ran a pass of Topaz denoise. The sun still seems to be on the edge, but I keep running into banding problems if I drop the exposure. Guidance is always appreciated
Canon 20D, 28-135 @85mm, 1/1000 sec @ F/11, - 1/3 EV

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Dave,
I see the banding........always tough when you have a bright sun in the frame. I usually handle it with some NR and/or blurring. I also debated taking some off the bottom......to further accentuate the curve of the shorelines.........this seems to make it "float" less. Overall........i think you did a very nice job compositionally and just a few PP tweaks will make this a very strong image. Nicely done!

[Dave Woeller]

Thank you for the guidance Roman. I agree with your thoughts and will go back and try to soften it just a touch more to see if the banding goes away. I like the idea of cropping up a touch also. Thanks again for your thoughts

[Robert Amoruso]

Hi Dave,

Very moody image - I like it. Roman's crop suggestion is a good one. One the banding - a typical problem with this type of image, Robert O'Toole recommended to me adding, yes adding a bit of noise to the image using a Filter. I will do this on a BG copy and mask off those parts of the image not affected. I will be flatten the BG copy, make another BG copy and run noise correction on it.

The problem has to do with a lack of tonal separation and how the software interprets the digital data, such that it makes rather obvious changes in tonal value along radial lines from the sun. The noise breaks up the pixel values and causes the banding to break up.

I also saw the process mentioned in a book by Vincent Versace though he did not go into detail about it.

[Dave Woeller]

Thank you Robert, I think I follow what you are saying and I'll experiment with that. Sounds like an interesting solution to the problem.

[Don Thompson]

Beautiful moody capture but after looking at it for awhile I have a small nit. Along the far bank there are two light objects. It doesn't ruin the image for me, but since you said you removed some signs and post, you might consider removing these also.

[Dave Woeller]

Now that you've mentioned it Don, I will add that to the list of to do's. You've got good (or younger than mine) eyes;)