The mystery deepens It obviously manifests itself differently at all these different re-sizings. The only one that matters though is the one that people are actually looking at - and the first one of those was your original posting. Its still there on this latest - but its not sharp and defined as before, more of the fading gradient type ... notice how the brightness sort of 'blooms' slightly around the top of head outline and merges into the brightness and tone of the stick thing behind. That doesn't happen around the rest of the birds outline.

If this can be anything useful for the general good, it would be to try and understand exactly what type of re-sizing process creates an added risk of this kind of thing becoming emphasised.

I think Alan already knows that I feel sorry for turning this into the 'halo thread' rather than the 'bird shots thread' Its clear though that we all see the components of photos differently - I understand for many it would not be noticed, or not significant, but the truth is that for me it was the first thing I saw on this image ... my eyes were pulled straight there, and that's not desirable at all.

We have our evidence of halo existence now, thanks Rob, so really what's important now is how to deal with it - this is nothing to do with photograher skill, anyone pushing the button will have got the same halo once the shot was set up. Its a question now of how to anticipate these little technical blights and then deal with them if required. Halos, in my experience, are mostly of the fading gradient type, mainly on sky horizons where the skys brightness has been reduced (the type we often see in HDR images). The answer then is generally to even out the gradient somehow, both in luminance and colour terms.

This is different - as I said originally it has the appearance of a masking brush error - not smooth enough on the edge blend, but we know its not that - the question is was it caused by the camera sensors responce to the high contrast bteween the black bird and the bright stuff behind, or is it some other type of processing artifact?

I've usually understood 'flat' to mean lacking contrast - ie needing a wider spread of tones on the histogram. How you get there depends on the software, but the traditional and most common approach would be auto levels in photoshop, plus some fine tuning.

But these images do have a reasonable spread on tones I think - maybe 'flat' here means lacking depth. Even though the backgrounds are out of focus, they seem crammed up behind the faces, and are quite dominating. This may be what is meant.

Hadn't even noticed But OK, do it - and chop off those silly heads sticking out at the same time.

They can keep on coming! ..... I'll be back ....

All good points, and its worthwhile exchanging these ideas. I don't want it to be too personal or exclusive to yourself or David, more making general points about criticism and how its taken on board. I'm sure you appreciate that any points I make usually follow plenty of appropriate praise where its due, so I make every effort to be balanced.

I am certainly not telling anyone to remove objects from their images - that is a misinterpretation. In the case of David's landscape horizon the most I would have advocated would have been some subtle burning along the horizon area in question. I respect his choice not to, but there is the risk then of the photo being seen by others as 'not perfect' in future,without the benefit of being able to discuss with the photographer on the internet, and that would be a great pity.

There was no jumping to a conclusion, and the images have been looked at very properly, and the conclusion is the same - that 'whatever it is' it looks like a halo. I think then its best to treat it as such rather than adhere rigidly to the position that 'that's what it looked like so thats how its staying'.

I love the deep blacks and the detail in the steam

No, this is only correct on one level - what you could state as fact is 'I don't see any haloing or artifacts, and I don't think it is of significance'. The really important point is not how we exactly label what is noticed, but the fact that it is noticed. If it causes a distraction for some viewers, then it is worthwhile to highlight to the photographer for consideration ... that is criticism.

And there's little point then in the photographer arguing 'no it isn't, no it isn't' - in many cases the consensus will be that it probably doesn't matter too much, depending on the intended use and output size for example, but that doesn't mean that in the context of criticism of high quality images, shot by who we might regard as semi-pro's, that we should not apply a high level of discriminating comment. I try to offer advice on the very finer points of quality presentation where sometimes that may be all that's left to say.

Going back to the perceived 'halo' on your lakes shot David, again, its the way that it was seen and interpreted that mattered - coincidentally it was also Alan who said he at first thought it was a halo issue as well. I truly believe, in photography, it doesn't matter really what exactly the photographer saw as actually 'there' - what matters more is if something presents or appears as a technical issue, and could be interpreted as that, then it should be treated as such.

It is controlled from the menu item 'Memory' - this sets the defaults that will be reverted to every time you turn on the camera, and includes White Balance, Drive Mode, flash mode and many others.

You go through the items one by one and tick the options you want to 'hold' in memory to be set when you turn the camera on. So ticking the item 'White Balance' means the memory will retain your previously set white balance ... if its not ticked it will go back each time to the factory default, which in this case is AWB.

Oh yes, you can all see me suffering here for my algorithms.


I'm starting to think here that, yes, this thread has been very revealing - but more so about the people contributing to it than about the actual images I've certainly been judged very clearly, but I am horrified to have 'tarred the brush' of the valued credibility of an army of passionate photograhy hobbyists, who will forever remain just where they are.

Well, I'm very grateful for the supportive comments and interest in the images and what questions they provoked. I hope that it has been interesting and informative, and yes, lets keeps experimenting and asking the questions!