Stream

A little stream flowing through a wooded valley opening out into a small lake. Photo shot directly towards the sun in the middle of the afternoon of a clear sunny day - last Wednesday (16/04/14):




JPEG straight from the camera apart from re-sizing for the web site.
K-5 II Manual Mode, ISO 200, f=20mm, f/8, 1/200s, +2/3 EV.

Any comments?

Cheers.
Philip

Thats looks like a really peaceful spot there, and I imagine the walk in to it was great also. I like the shot, its got a low viewpoint which works well and the eye is drawn along towards the distance. The colours are good, appropriately subdued as its mostly under the 'canopy'.

I'd select the bright open sky area (to avoid brighteneing it any more), then inverse the selection and give a pull inwards on the highlights input slider in levels - this would add a touch more glisten to the bright spots touching the various leaves and sparking water - I think that would add a bit more ... well, sparkle!

Appreciate the technical data you've given there, that is excellent - I should really start recording that more - I find I lose a lot with the conversion. A good way would be to shoot a small JPEG as well a RAW just to store the camera metadata. I see you had +2/3 ec, unusual for this type of location, but I see that there is a lot of brightness in the centre frame ... out of interest were youy using centre-weighted or matrix?

Hello Nigel. This was a photo taken at one of my favorite National Trust properties - Stowe Landscape Gardens - and this woodland is at the eastern end of the lakes. The K-5 was set on multi-segment (matrix) metering, and 2/3 EV were added because the shot was towards the very bright sky, with its equally bright reflections on the water.

I am grateful to you for viewing and commenting, and also for your suggestions. Even though I usually shoot JPEGs, I always tweak the images to my taste for my own use, and I will try your tips. In this case, I was interested to read any comments on the image as is - straight from the camera - so thank you for your contributions.

Cheers.
Philip

You've very welcome, I'm always interested in camera settings. In this case it is informative that matrix was used, because its been very effective, along with your compensation - I would imagine that the traditional centre weighted metering would have under-exposed the image too much (as it would not 'see' as much of the darker outer areas around the frame. )

Regarding the levels adjustment, for camera JPEGs I wonder what effect the slider 'High Contrast' would have? Its not really 'whitepoint', but I think corresponds more to a typical 'highlights' slider in photo editors. Anyway, it would be interesting to know if pulling it upwards would help with the brighter bits in the image here without increasing mid-tone brightness (which I don't think is wanted).

Thank you again, Nigel. I suspect that you have realised that this would be a difficult scene to expose correctly, given the deep shadows in the woodland and the very bright sky and reflections. In fact, this was posted with other recent images in mind, e.g by John Riley, to show the effect of the in-camera HDR setting (this setting was switched on here). I have found this to be a useful and effective tool in Pentax cameras, particularly, as in this example, the auto-alignment works well for hand-held shots.

Cheers.
Philip

Two edited versions to attempt more "sparkle", the 1st with the levels adjustment, the 2nd with local contrast enhancement:







Cheers.
Philip

here's my take on it ....

Philip, of your 2 new versions there I think the 2nd is the best, seems to strike the right balance. More sparkle and it looks a little sharper too - you've kept the basic brightness of you original interpretation as well.

Smeggy's goes further, a bit far I think with the darkening, and this has pulled the contrast back too much I feel and the open sky now looks like a storm is now rolling in! It has more mood, so if you like that Philip it might be worth trying to darken the undergrowth a bit - Smeggy, you've got some artifacts there around the trees in the far distance - is that just LR struggling a bit there?