Nikon D3100, 55-300mm, don’t have the rest of the info at hand, was handheld.
This is from January 2018, from a DV workshop with Guy Tal and Michael Gordon. Any critique is welcome. I do wonder if you think the ripples, especially in the foreground, are decently sharp. Many of my ripple shots made with this lens appear fuzzy; it almost looks like micro-scale chromatic aberration. Granted, this camera/lens combo is not the top of the line, but I’m fond of it.
Bonnie,
Fantastic image - and awesome contribution to the layer challenge. Excellent job compressing the scene and isolating the many dunes and layers. The opposing lines, the contrasts, all working for a great image.
Since you mentioned it, I would say that yes, this does appear a little soft or lacking high resolution? I’m wondering if hand holding contributed. Of course it’s hard to evaluate without seeing the RAW and also knowing what you may have used in RAW or PS processing for sharpening. DOF looks good, so not quite sure what to offer here, but in general it’s just not as sharp as one would hope.
Lon
A lovely image with awesome layers, Bonnie. Like Lon, I really like the alternating opposite slopes. There might be a bit of issue with hand holding, but that should get worse with distance. Without knowing your shooting parameters, it’s hard to guess what the cause might be.
Nice entry in the WC, Bonnie. Sometimes you don’t really need super high I.Q. with simple and straightforward abstracts, just depends on your intentions. If mine I’d likely have a good deal less contrast, but that’s just a matter of taste.
Bonnie, the zig-zag ridges look great. I also really like the lighting. At the image sizes posted, I think it’s very unlikely that the softness is a lens quality issue. Those differences only show up in very large prints, unless there’s a problem with the lens. The softness might be hand holding, but that will depend on the camera, shutter speed and focal length setting of the lens. Dune ridges also can have inherent softness as the smallest sand grains pile up on the windward side. You likely have other shots of these dunes. How does their sharpness look? To me the sharpness looks the same throughout the image.
Thanks for the comments, @Lon_Overacker, @Dennis_Plank, @Bill_Leggett, and @Mark_Seaver. I looked at the data, and I shot it at 1/30s, zoomed out to 300mm, so the softness is operator “error” not the lens. I tend to overestimate how slow I can shoot and still maintain focus.
