Really late putting these up, got back from South America (was there for 6 weeks hiking and camping) a month ago. Let me know what you think, I broke my tripod before my trip and never got around to buying one, it definitely would have helped :-\

I shot almost all of them with a Sigma 10-20 on a Nikon D90 with either a Circular polarizer, GND .6, or (heaven forbid), both

I personally don't care for this one but some other people liked it, these are the Cerros near Fitzroy in El Chaltén, Argentina.



This is opposite of the POV on the above image, I really like how it turned out but can't describe why



I remember liking this one a lot when I took it, my editing skills are fairly weak (perhaps effort is more the concern, though)



The ladders in Torres Del Paine were a bit rickety



One of my biggest problems is correctly using my filters, a lot of the time I won't have them properly aligned so you get overly dark parts of the skyline (like the upper left here)



I feel like I botched this amazing opportunity, the clouds barely let off like this...A tripod (picture was at 5 AM) would have helped a lot but any other ideas?



And for laughs, the facial expression of this llama

Springsteen, some nice photos there - love the Llama! I think #6 is my personal fav.

I remember reading an article (which I think was by Ken Rockwell) where it was advised not to use a polariser on super wide angle lenses, as the polarisation will shift across the sky due to how much of the sky the focal length will be taking in. This could maybe explain some of the issues you said you were having with correctly using your filters. I think I'd be inclined to try shooting without a polariser in such situations if possible, or maybe taking shots both with and without as a backup. I notice that you definietly seem to have some pretty heavy vignetting in some of your skies, but I can't tell if this is a conscious decision made in post, or one of the issues you were referring to.

One thing I'd say is that a couple of your photos are maybe too high in contrast for my tastes - there's a couple where the highlights are clipped and the darks are very dark (I think 2+3 are prob the 2 obv examples), but I'm not sure whether it's due to the dynamic range of the scene or your choice of post processing. Did you shoot RAW or JPEG? It'd be really nice to try to get some detail back into those clipped highlights if the exposures contain that information IMHO.

I'm only just starting to properly use the histogram (I used to just adjust levels until i liked the colors...) so you're definitely right about a few of them being too contrasted. The vignetting is a symptom of improper use of filters and also of stacking, stacking my filters forces me to zoom to 12mm at least...I'll probably stop stacking and will try to not use them as much in general.

Thanks for the advice!

Can someone please explain the histogram to me? I still have zero clue what I'm supposed to be looking at.

Sizzler, think of it as a bar chart that counts the number of pixels of each luminance value in the image, with luminance on the x axis and pixel count on the y axis. It might look like a continuous shape, but it's really lots of discrete bar graph entries packed very closely to each other. If you look at it this way, it is basically showing you the distribution of light values in an image.

Ideally you would like to avoid spikes at either end, as this will suggest lots of pixels with a value of either 0 or 255 (in an 8bit image such as a jpeg), and as 0 = pure black and 255 = pure white, it would suggest significant clipping in your image.

A general hump in the middle of the histogram would suggest the presence of lots of mid tones, which would be fairly standard in a lot of subject material including portraits.

if the chart is skewed far to the right than you will experienced an overexposed image. If it is skewed to the left than you will have an underexposed image. I only use the histogram when I am shooting video. I try to get a nice distribution around the middle. Not sure if that is optimal?

Also when you over process an image you can often see in the histogram that information is being removed. Instead of a continuous looking histogram you might see large chunks missing. I think in photoshop and lightroom you should have access to the histogram. Can't say I know any of the science behind it.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...stograms.shtml
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...istograms1.htm

Couple of links for you on the subject Suzz.

JV, the "broken" histograms that you refer to are generally a result of post-processing an image that does not have enough data in it to accommodate the calculations performed on the image from the processing, and can result in visual artefacts such as posterisation. This is generally more of an issue with 8bit images than those with a higher bit depth (another good argument for shooting RAW!)

This article from Adobe explains it better than I could:

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/a...49303&seqNum=4

I usually try and expose as far right as possible without blowing the highlights.

The image will look too bright but can easily be fixed with the brightness/contrast sliders in the RAW-processing software. Must shoot RAW for this to work and must adjust the image before importing it to PS or whatever.

If I understand correctly there is more data available in the lighter parts of the image and any noise is minimized. There was an article about this somewhere...

pele - you are correct (although I'd personally correct the image brightness by starting with the exposure slider before using brightness and contrast). I think the article you are referring to was called something like "expose to the right", and I think it may have been another Luminous Landscape article - I'm going to see if a quick google will find it:

Found it:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...se-right.shtml

There were a few hits for "expose to the right" on Google, but this is the one that I was thinking of.

Yes that's the one, and your are correct about exposure probably the first I'd change. Most important is that you adjust in the RAW software like Camera RAW or Lightroom and not in PS.

Yep. Agree 100%

I'm looking for a tripod to take on a last minute trip out to Zion and Page, AZ (Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon), hoping someone here might have a recommendation. I'm an aspiring amateur photographer, I used to do more travel oriented stuff but I'm getting more interested in landscapes. I shoot with a Nikon D40.

I'm not looking to spend a ton, but at the same time I don't want to get something cheap that just has to be replaced soon, just a solid, somewhat portable, but not quite professional tripod...is <$50 reasonable? Ideally it would be something on amazon that is prime eligible because of the short notice.

I'm currently looking at this one, which has mostly positive reviews but its hard to tell too much.

http://www.amazon.com/Dolica-ST-500-...pr_product_top

I'm also going to try to be more active in this thread, I posted here some a while back but haven't been shooting much recently. I'm getting back into it though and am starting to realize just how much I have to learn and this is a great resource.

ChromePony - check this one out

http://www.amazon.com/Manfrotto-7322...793814&sr=1-11

Manfrotto are a brand I trust, and there's about 50% off it right now.

I didn't check too hard, but that tripod you were checking out seems to be a video tripod at first glance (not 100% sure though)

That one looks pretty good, the only catch seems to be that it doesn't come with a quick release plate which seems pretty essential to me. That would add an extra $35 from what I can tell which might put it a bit out of my price range. It's also not on prime which means an extra $7 shipping and no guarantee it gets here on time.

You're right that the one I linked appears to be more of the tilt pan style and I've heard a ball head is a good idea, so maybe something a small step up from that. Any thoughts on this one?

http://www.amazon.com/Davis-Sanford-...pr_product_top

I remember the first tripod I bought was like a $40 POS from best buy. I wanted to smash it into little pieces every single time I used it. I don't know anything about the tripod you linked, but I have a hard time recommending a tripod under 50 bucks. Now for travel tripods I do recommend the brand benro. Look on amazon for their travel angel series, their cheapest one is about $150 so that might be out of your price range. But I got a benro a few months ago and have been very impressed with its quality considering its price and weight.

I have a Benro as well and it works fine for me. It's a little shorter than ideal but makes up for that by fitting in a zipped backpack. I would recommend spending a bit more money if possible so you only have to buy a tripod once but it's also not too bad of an idea to get a cheap one to try out so you can realize what you don't like about it and be informed for your next purchase but I'm not sure you want to be doing that on a big trip.

Thought these were pretty cool.

http://www.slate.com/slideshows/arts...r.html#slide_1

Nikon officially announces the D4: http://www.photographybay.com/2012/0...K33dNrETSv62xu

#WantButCouldNeverAfford

Looks like a really good camera, I'd take one for sure

Pretty cool sunset near my parents house in the Chicago burbs yesterday

v nice! Stitched or cropped?

I worked on a couple of these today, trading a Photoshop session for HTML/CSS coaching with a friend of mine.


On this one we undid some of the stuff I didn't like from the first round like lightening the middle ground (valley). We did a gaussian blur on the blue part of thy sky to eliminate the noise, although I still think it looks kind of like it's printed on rough paper. And we did a high-pass filter at radius 6.6 with really made the mountain pop. I'm hooked on high-pass filter now I think. Also a bunch of other little nudges to the color and brightness.


This one I did a saturation adjustment layer on the whole sky then another on just the sun part. Still a work in progress but I like it with some red and orange.

After I wrote the stuff about the high-pass filter on the Ranier pic, I realized I didn't try it yet on the flowers pic. So here it is with high pass:



I didn't like what it did to the sky, too much noise. So I completely masked it out on the sky. Then I partially masked it out on some spots on the mountain and in the grass where I thought it was creating too much noise. But I really like what it did to the flowers.

Lol compare that to the original pic, which me and mike kelley had already worked on a bunch.

Those still look too dark for me so i gave it a quick go. I put some curves on to brighten up everything but sky, did some more contrast on the middle, added some saturation and green, tightened the crop and threw on a few other bonus filters for good measure. Maybe a bit too much.

suzzer that re-edit is awesome! amazing what you did to it!

Oh yeah. I just got a job as a writer at www.fstoppers.com. Are there any topics that any of you guys here would like to see covered? I'd love to see if there is any material that anyone in this thread would like to know more about other than the usual gear posts, etc. Post processing, cool projects you've seen, whatever. Just let me know and I'll see what I can do.