Wide-Angle Weirdness

[canoli]

Thanks Everyone - for your thoughts and suggestions.
I've learned quite a bit reading over your comments.



Maybe my familiarity with the scene clouds my judgement of the shot. In reality those buildings are huge. Standing across the river you "feel" their presence; it's imposing, like a wall along the river's edge. Now that I've read your comments and thought about it more, I can see there was no way I was going to capture any of that quality with this shot.



Thanks for pointing out some of the things that do work about the image. I like the texture in the water and the colors/reflections.



I was especially interested in your comments regarding the softness of the buildings and the motion blur showing up in the boat's lettering. I hadn't really noticed either one. Your guesses were right on the money though, it was quite windy that morning, and the East River flows at a rapid rate in any case. I never even thought of raising the ISO. I've never dealt with such a sensitive subject before like this boat in the water. A 6-sec shutter speed... I should've known...




I'll have to try your suggestions of a faster shutter/higher ISO/tighter aperture for better DOF... I really appreciate all of your comments and I can't wait to put them into practice.


Thanks again! You guys are the best!

[canoli]

hey Rich - by all means - I'd love to see what you come up with.


That's a great idea - cut out some of the FG water and maybe the buildings loom a little larger. It sure can't hurt; there's not much happening in the dark FG water anyway...


thanks again for your comments and your help!

[canoli]

Something like this you mean?


My crop ends up at 1.7 aspect ratio. To keep the 3/2 means cutting off the tall bldg on the right side. I didn't even try it - I figured the image would just get weaker without that "anchor" on the edge.


Anyway - you were right, it looks much better without all the FG water.


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[Richard Lane]

Hey, I'm back!


All I did was crop out the foreground water and move the left side over slightly to eliminate that other boat. I unchecked constrain image, so therefore the final crop was not constrained.


Now.., I'm cropping a 164kb file that I downloaded from here, so the quality won't be as good as you cropping the original, but at least you will get an idea of what I am talking about.


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Compare this to your original post, and I think you will agree that the skyline is now more the focal point as opposed to the rear-end of the boat. It's really not about right or wrong, it's more about personal preference.


I hope this helps,


<span style="font-size: 11.6667px;"]Rich

[canoli]

Wow, unless I'm quite mistaken I think I just learned something here... Is it possible I'm seeing the "push in tight to your subject" effect just with this crop?


I'm referring to the advice you always read about wide-angle lenses, about pushing in tight on a subject (with a WA lens), how it can pull an image together.


I didn't realize it could work on an image like this, one with a distant BG like these buildings. I guess I always assumed it was strictly an indoor guideline.


I sure didn't follow the advice when I took the shot but I swear I'm seeing some of the possibilities now, just by viewing the effects of this crop. Does that make any sense?

[canoli]

Hmmm, very interesting! Seriously. Did you use the 3D function in Photoshop? Or the geometric distortion controls in DxO?


I can't figure out how you kept all the BG buildings on the RH side...


Nice work, whatever you did!

[Richard Lane]

Yes, you're right, because before.., your foreground object was the water and now it is the water and the boat.

[Richard Lane]

No, actually I just did a simple crop in iPhoto and I unchecked the box that says keep Image Constrained, by doing this it keeps it more like a landscape/wide look instead of a constrained/square.


In aperture you would just use the pull down window in the crop feature and when you see Aspect ratio, you would select "Do Not Constrain."


If you crop without constraining the image then you could just crop from the top or bottom only, and leave the right side or left side of the image alone. You could also crop from the sides and leave the top and bottom alone.


When you use Constrain the image, it changes the width when you change the length and vice versa, to keep a certain aspect ratio.

[canoli]

Ah okay, gotcha. It really looks much better.


I wanted to follow-up on the sharpness question. I know you mentioned using a tighter aperture next time and your reason was the softness of the buildings.


Does the hyperfocal distance help me at all here - even if I can calculate it on the spot?


Your comments suggest I can expect f/11 to keep both the boat and the buildings sharp. I assume you mean by focusing on the boat right? And the HFD? Does it even matter with a shot like this?


Thanks again!

[canoli]

This is more like what I thought I'd get with the other shot- regarding the size of the boat/buildings that is.


5D 70-200 2.8 IS @ 70mm 4sec @ f/22 ISO 100


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