Monorail Motion

[Santanu Banik]

Sydney ~ Darling Harbour - tried to capture the motion of monorail. Criticism and suggestions are most welcome!

Canon 40D, 17-85mm lens @ 17 mm, B+W 10 stop filter, Manual exposure, 1.3 secs, ISO 100, Tripod

http://www.frozenforeternity.com/images/data/media/17/_MG_3770_sRGB.jpg

[Dave Mills]

Hi Santanu, Interesting effect and good use of the monorail as a leading line. At 17mm with an angle like this you will get some distortion but in this case I'm not terribly bothered by it. I feel the image would be strengthened by cropping out about half the sky. Not sure why it's fogged on the rt and I noticed traces of dust spots in different areas of the image....

[Santanu Banik]

Thanks a lot Dave for your inputs. There are lots of dust spots whcih I tried to clean during processing - couldn't clean all of them. I agree with your cropping idea - should look better.
The fogged part at the right could be due to the clouds.

[Tim Munsey]

Cracking shot this one, love the treatment.

Tim

[Robert Amoruso]

Santanu,

Nicely seen and executed image. I like how you put your copyright on the speeding train - very cool.

Not sure why you said that you could not get all the dust spots as that is a simple cloning operation. Though I do see a lot of them so perhaps you are referring to the time to do it vs. the ability to do it. If that is the case, then keeping a very clean sensor for shooting at small apertures is a must. By the way, you did not mention the aperture used as it would be pertinent to my comment and helped me to understand the issue with the dust better.

I reposted a vertically corrected lens distortion using PSCS5. when you perhaps need to do this type of correction, it is best to frame loser as you can see the that edges get truncated. If you are very serious about architectural imagery, then a tilt-shift lens is a good investment.

I like the sky as is. This is a thing Dave and I generally agree to disagree on. I do agree with Dave that a crop would look AOK with this image, but many times I like what I call "the big sky look" and I like it here as I feel it adds to the mode.

I normally create two versions of images with and w/o the big sky and "live" with them awhile before deciding which I like.

[Santanu Banik]

Thanks a ton Robert for your valuable tips.

On cloning, yeah - I meant the time ... lazy me! :t3

I liked your repost and the vertical distortion correction idea. This correction adds value to this image in my opinion.

The aperture was F/22.

I need to get the sensor cleaned ASAP :2eyes2:

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Santanu,
Still on my Florida tour.....so a bit late in responding.......I think the motion blur is fantastic. I did agree with Dave on the darker area of the sky but Robert also brings up some escellent counterpoints. I think the overall look is a bit dark.......which to me doesn't suit the image entirely......perhaps some more middle ground tonal work?.....some of the areas have a muddy tone in the buildings and even the train itself.....ingeneral I prefer as much tonality as possible......so tweaking that will only make the great comp shine even more! I think you did an excellent job comp wise.....just the tones need some more tweaking IMO.

[Santanu Banik]

Thanks a lot Roman; I have noted your inputs.