Horizon correction - what are the downsides?

Hi Waypoint Charlie, sorry if we drifted off your thread. I found the horizon tool poor on the K5 so never tried it yet on the K3.

I do check horizons afterwards with my Photoplus horizon tool before ever daring posting seascapes on the gallery on here so I get your point for out of camera competitions. Large bright 35mm sized viewinders with a grid focus screen will surely sort us all out in October if we can afford one.

I will take all the advice on levelling aids seriously next week after all the complimentary raki. My wife has an excellent inbuilt sense of when I'm off alignment. I won't take my computer though as a desktop tower and 24" screen seem to exceed the charter planes allowances

Okay, I'm reporting back my experience from last night attempting some straight-out-of-the-camera shots.

Horizon Correction - forget it. On my K5-IIs it usually seems pretty accurate for single shots but varies a bit between shots and is all over the place when it comes to bracketed (e.g. HDR) and, presumably, burst modes. Perhaps the sensor is quite sensitive to camera vibration and you should select 3 sec delays between bracketed shots. I also noticed it seemed to have difficulty if there was too much vertical tilt (even though the horizon indicator in the viewfinder was still working).

Straight-out-of-the-camera - what a waste of time. I was working at sunset with rapidly changing light conditions. I was spending too much time trying (and failing) to keep on top of exposure times and colour balance for a 10-stop filter that it left too little time on composition and taking photos. You can't use AWB with a 10-stop filter. I find that taking a manual white balance of a grey card works well, but this takes time and only works when the light isn't changing fast.

In this, not very original, example I ended up underexposed by about 1/3rd a stop, the horizon is out by about 0.1° and the colour balance and curves could do with a tweak. All things that are easy to fix PP. Visually that 0.3 stop makes a big difference, but getting the exposure spot-on in such changing light conditions is as much down to luck as skill. Of course, it's expecting a lot to get a good shot, SOOTC with a flat horizon using a 10-stopper at sunset, but for a competition you can't opt for the easy shot!

Here's the mono version, one shot earlier. It's rather lacking in contrast and I think I prefer colour. Too much sky in both IMO. Oh for post processing!

Hm, I much prefer the mono - it's moody. Dreamy. Sadly, with digital pp, we got accustomed to everything being crisp, sharp, with almost unreal contrast. That mono has a very 'film' look to me

+1 for level in a hot shoe from me.

That said, this out of camera business is a bit unfair, assuming equal skill. Cameras vary so much in how they process the jpgs and what sort of presets and adjustments are available that it almost seems pointless? A strange way to approach a competition. For it to be anywhere near an even ground where skill and talent can shine, everyone should be taking a photo with the same camera and the same jpg settings. As it is, users can still affect the internal 'pp' process - depending on camera, to bigger or smaller extend. What camera you have and how much fiddling with settings you're allowed, might be the determining factor when it comes to winners and that's hardly different that actually allowing 'normal' pp.

Either way, best of luck WaypointCharlie.

I absolutely take your points regarding a SOOTC competition Mag07. In its defence I would say that it has proved popular and it works in practice.

Thinking of a slide competition though, which is as SOOTC as we can get, we can still use filters, zoom exposures, cross processing, slow shutter effects, and also choose the contrast and grain characteristics by choosing the film.

A "level playing field" is not as easy as we might imagine. Also, a £1000 lens might make for sharper images than a £50 lens. That too changes the fairness or otherwise of a competition.

It's one of those things if we just take it as read and go out and enjoy making images, being very careful we compose and expose them accurately, then we have the essence of a fun competition. The more we analyse it, the more difficult it becomes.

By all means, that's where ability to PP comes into play - making the gear gap a tad less annoying I'd imagine.

However,

Hard not to agree with that. Ultimately it's all about the fun/challenge/participation