We don’t get many frosty days @ Cosumnes River Preserve. And on those rare days when it does happen, the frost quickly fades away right after the sun rises over the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east.
Feedback Requests
I softened the background in Lightroom using the Dehaze and Texture sliders. On some days, I think I softened the background too much - made it look too obvious. And on other days, I think I did not do enough. What do you think?
Pertinent Technical Details
Nikon Z8 + 105 mm macro
1/160 sec at f/8, ISO 160, Tripod
There was a slight breeze, so I increased the shutter speed and ISO to freeze (pun intended) some of the motion. It took several tries before I was able to capture an image when the breeze had momentarily died down and the bush stopped shaking.
Franz, I think the BG looks good. I can tell it was softened simply because I sometimes do the same and end up asking myself the same question. I have concluded that the technique can help but is not a worthy substitute for more distance between subject and BG, and letting DOF do all the isolation. But we have to work with what is presented.
If this was my photo, I’d try to get better detail of the frost’s crystalline structure using texture and sharpening in LR. Doing so would also provide more separation from the BG and perhaps allow less post-shutter BG softening.
For the wind, I have resorted to using a LiteDisc to block the wind and the camera’s timer to trip the shutter. The diffusion model works really well for this - in fact I find it indispensable for macro work in direct sunlight.
Franz, the subject here is nicely frosty. The softness of the surroundings lets it stand out well. I think you’ve handled that well. As Jim says, “fixing problems” during post processing is always harder than fixing when you take the photo and almost always adds some artifacts. bit cannot be avoided at times. That’s fine as long as you’re not planning to show a large print.
One more postscript on your comments on my image regarding sharpening the ice crystals…
I went back and took a look at the original 16-bit 8254-pixel-wide image (as opposed to the scrunched down 1500-pixel-wide 8-Bit 60% lossy compression version that got posted on NPN), and I’m happy with the sharpness/texture detail version of the original.
I’ve noticed the same problem with some of the other images I posted on NPN. Scrunching/compressing does have an impact on quality. [SIGH!]
I know Greg Benz’s Lumenzia and Tony Kuyper’s TK8 tools now have plugins for Photoshop that tweak sharpness for posting on social media (and NPN). But that means two extra steps: bringing it into Photoshop from Lightroom, and then processing it through one of these two plugins.
I have a limited amount of time, and (for better or worse) have decided that posting more less-than-perfect images on NPN is more productive for me than posting fewer more-perfect images. [Another SIGH!!]
Cheers,
Franz
P.S. The NPN team is doing a great job. Two thumbs up every time I log on…
There’s actually a setting in the Lightroom export panel that allows one to limit the file size of an exported image. That is to say, set the jpg quality to 100 and then limit the file size to 500K. On a related note, Greg Benz (the Lumenzia guy) has also been heavily marketing his “Web Sharp Pro” tool. It would be interesting to see what it can do. Perhaps even do a comparison between these two. [Will share the results should I ever try them out.]
