Lightroom Playground Week 9 - Comments & Questions

[bayhli]

Please use this thread to post your comments and questions for LR Playground Week 9.

Link back to the original photo: here

[Edmund]

After I posted my image for week -9, I noticed that the horizon is slightly off so if I were to go back and re-edit more The first thing I would do is to straighten out the horizon by dragging a straight line fron left to right across the screen to include the roof of the little cabin. It's not off by much but would add to the image.
Eddie

[bayhli]

Hi Eddie,

A straight horizon is one of the first things I notice in my images, so I knew this one was crooked and noticed that you didn't straighten it the first time around. I cheated and took out the dust spots though before posting it!

Having snow for five months of the year I'm getting pretty good with the exposure; I use the simple method of adding exposure compensation, beginning with +1 and altering it depending on what the histogram is doing.

However, when I look back at this image (this is last winter's photo and everything was practice), there is no exposure compensation at all and the settings are quite strange. I took many shots before this one and all of them had exposure comp added but the histogram is sliding up the right side, so I had the blinkies and kept reducing it and in the end didn't use any EC. So I don't know why this one worked - perhaps the sky and the trees balanced the light with matrix metering? Interesting...

Here's the metadata:
f8.0
1/500 sec
ISO 100
EC: 0
Matrix metering
Aperture Priority Mode
94mm with 70-200mm lens

I'd certainly be interested in your further comments.

[Edmund]

Pat, I have noticed with my Nikon D-80 that when all things are equal ie beautiful blue sky, sunny, I can use matrix metering and it is right on but I usually go with -1/3 stop compensation to keep my highlights. Who knows maybe with a equal amount of sky ,trees, and foreground snow it was nailed to be correct as is.
Eddie

[Chuck S.]

Eddie, I almost always use a -1/3 EC on my cameras; keeps those skies from blowing out most of the time.

[bayhli]

Ed & Chuck, I'll have to remember that -1/3 comp if I ever see green earth again - I assume you guys mean you use it without any snow present.

Julie, nice of you to comment about "snowflakes" on my lens but no that would have been dust spots I missed cloning out before posting the image! LOL I was nervous about cleaning the sensor the first time so kept putting it off and it got really bad - it finally was taking me so long to clean up my images I braved up and cleaned it.

Everyone was pretty creative with this image - enjoyed seeing all the ideas. Eddie you sure did a nice job of drawing out the warmth in the image - I developed mine similarly with the help of a cloudy white balance but it is lacking when I look at what you did. Nice job!

[Chuck S.]

Originally Posted by bayhli

Ed & Chuck, I'll have to remember that -1/3 comp if I ever see green earth again - I assume you guys mean you use it without any snow present.

Snow? What is snow??

p.s. Yes, I use the -1/3 compensation for normal scenes not involving snow.....

[bayhli]

You devil is right Chuck! I see that Texas location - God, I don't want to even think about the heat you are getting at this weary stage of winter!

I think Eddie might see a few flakes here and there... ??

[Chuck S.]

Pat, it's about 20 degrees here right now.....Celsius!

But just wait until I'm sweltering in the oppressive heat and humidity from May until October....then we'll see who gets the last laugh!

[bayhli]

Chuck,

20 degrees Celsius...... "JUST SHOOT ME NOW" !!!