volcano sunset at Katmai Bay, AK

[Steve Uffman]

From Robert Otoole's Alaska Eagle workshop...

5dmkiii...handheld from a boat (but what the heck, take a deep breath, brace yourself and go for it, right?)

[Jay Gould]

Right! And it works; except, it needs less than one degree of CCW. The water on the LHS is slightly thicker from the waterline to the bottom of the image than the waterline to the bottom of the image just left of the extended headland.

[Don Railton]

Hi Steve

Well done with the hand holding, beautiful evening. Did you realise you have forgotten to post details of other settings used...?

Jay, I think your rule for determining level images only works when the sea horizon touches sky. In this case the sea horizon touches land and with any land that is closer the horizon will be correctly positioned lower in the frame compared to more distant land (unless you get the lens wet..). See RHS of this image...

Don

[Mark Wiseman]

Beautiful image Steve, a wonderful landscape.
Well done and thanks for sharing,
Mark.

[Steve Uffman]

Hi Steve

Well done with the hand holding, beautiful evening. Did you realise you have forgotten to post details of other settings used...?

Jay, I think your rule for determining level images only works when the sea horizon touches sky. In this case the sea horizon touches land and with any land that is closer the horizon will be correctly positioned lower in the frame compared to more distant land (unless you get the lens wet..). See RHS of this image...

Don


Don, thanks for the feedback....I actually leveled the image using the water line in the distance....

I spend a great deal of time on the water and have seen many amazing skies at dusk....so I have a 'Hail Mary' sort of preset that I start with since hand holding and low light are always given in that situation

....As to specs....well I am not sure they are of much use to anybody because they are my "Hail Mary" settings...and they probably break all the rules....but I have several nice dusk images using it.... so I always try the Hail Mary if needed.

My experience has been that an intentional underexposure within limits will bring out the colors....and occasionally a nice image.

What I do if first pick a shutter speed that I can handhold (and in this case the boat was moving so it had to be a bit faster) and an aperture that will give me what I want(usually f/6.3- f/8)....I also try to take the image where I have enough light to focus although have on occasion, manually focused at a distance. I then select an ISO that gives me a chance of adding up to two stops of light in post processing but usually limit it to no more than 1600.

The Hail Mary for this one if you are curious Manual 1/800sec f/6.3 ISO 400 120mm 70-200mm f/2.8 II on a Canon 5dMKIII

Again this is a HAIL MARY strategy when the skies are beautiful, but everything else is not....

[John Ippolito]

Lovely image of Mt Iliamna volcano. Well done indeed!

[Hilary Hann]

Steve, what a fabulous composition, I haven't seen anything like this before. Love the silhouetted mountains, all slightly different, and the line of volcano ash ? (or whatever it is) leading from the peak towards the left of the image. I think the horizon is just an illusion, looks straight by my measuring. Your Hail Mary seems to have worked well.

[Jay Gould]

You decide; from LR4.

I simply cropped the image until the LR straight line touched the water on the LHS and left a hint of "air" above the line as you went towards the RHS.

Am I nit picking; I don't think so. Steve's image is wonderful; no question about that.

However, looking at the image I felt an unbalance no matter how small.

It is so easy to do what I did either on the screen or in LR that it should be done to all images.

[Steve Uffman]

Thanks Jay, your eyes and experience with landscapes both beat mine...on the original post, I used the level and stretched it across and could not discern...but you have good credibility with me so I will fix it. Also appreciate your input and critique...

[Jay Gould]

I too 99% of the time use the level line by putting on one point and stretching it to the other point. In a close call I will first do what I presented here to see the visual difference.

If you start with the stretched line, you are simply stretching across what you think is straight and then LR makes the correction.

I want to visually see the difference as I did here before I rely on the stretched line/auto correction.

Cheers, Mate

PS: Perhaps I am so unbalance in my life :Whoa!: that I see unbalance in other aspects! :tinysmile_shy_t:

[Don Railton]

Hello Jay

Technically speaking, the points you have choosen to level the image are only valid for this purpose if they are equidistant from the camera. I am happy to discuss this but I dont think this post is the correct place to do that so I will leave it at that..

Don

[Jay Gould]

Hello Jay

Technically speaking, the points you have choosen to level the image are only valid for this purpose if they are equidistant from the camera. I am happy to discuss this but I dont think this post is the correct place to do that so I will leave it at that..

Don

Mate, the answer then is to move the discussion or start a leveling discussion in either Workflow or General;I'll play~