I'll give you one guess

simon

Hi Emma,

My suggestion would be, if possible, to try out an UWA such as the Sigma 10-20 before buying one. I recently sold mine as personally I didn't find it nearly as useful as I expected for landscape shots..

the problem is that scenery becomes distant making strong foreground elements even more important, whilst this doesn't sound a bad thing I found that as a result the foreground often became the main subject..this didn't really suit my own personal "style" of shots. I wasn't too keen on the inevitable distortion that UWA lenses produce either. I find that most of my shots are in the 17 - 25mm focal range

simon

Thanks,

I did submit the Llandudno pier shot, it's not the one shortlisted though - it's the "Snowdonia reflection" one

I'd agree that there's certainly a mix of "quality" in the entries, nice to be shortlisted just the same

Simon

Had some more good news this morning, received an email to say one of my shots has been shortlisted in the "Landscape" section of The Times, Great British Summer competition

Not sure if I can post the shot yet though

Great to have a bit of luck in only my 1st real year of seriiously entering competitions, managed a "shortlisted" in the Take-a-view competition last year (only one I entered)


simon


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/related_features/great_british_s...

Hi George,

If the camera had been level the only scenery in the shot would have been the very top of tryfan & Pen yr olwen, would'nt be any lakes

I've also tried these vantage points with my previous Sigma 10-20 & it's the main reason I sold it...just too wide - the mountains disappear into the distance and don't have any prescence. What may well be worth a try though is a pano

simon

My thoughts too...I think the shot here is slightly out of focus rather than having an issue with sharpness.

As others have mentioned RAW always needs sharpening whereas if you "tweak" the in-camera options .JPGs can be fine "as captured". Personally I apply sharpening twice - a little in ACR (capture shrpening) & then I use the photoshop plug-in "photokit" that tailors the sharpening to the output size/type

simon

Just a comment on the Cokin filters, I've had some "issues" with the P series producing colour casts, as have lots of other people on another forum - I've recently replaced them with Hi-Tech filters which seem much better in this respect

simon

Thanks for the feedback, the Glyderau are a great place for hiking and photography and certainly my favourite area in Wales. The reason I tried the B&W conversion is that I'm not particularly happy with the lighting in the colour version, bit too harsh - even though it does show the contours/landscape more accurately.

As coincidence I've just become involved in a "project" to put a book together from "Wainwrights Snowdonia viewpoints" and this one of the views he sketched so I'll be reshooting this anyway, the feedback here will help me improve on this one

thanks

Simon

This is a shot I took last year whilst hiking in the Glyderau mountains in North Wales, it was quite a hazy day so I've converted the shot to mono & added quite a bit of contrast to try & rescue it...appreciate all opinions on this one

thanks

Simon

[IMG]http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e68/STKITCHIN/G105409_mono_nosharp.jpg[/IMG]

OK, to be honest I'm not really sure on the "haze" comment. Saturation wise it was shot with a polariser and has had +10 vibrance added in PP, that's it.

Printed the shot looks pretty good (even better without the colours cast !!)

Simon