The Church of the Good Shepherd

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

You will not believe just how difficult it was to get this shot.

I spent two days on and around this site, first day was cold and grey with intermittent rain throughout, but still this little church attracted the selfie stickers in their hordes. Evening came and the light still wasn't too good, but the crowds just kept on coming. Dawn the rain had finally stopped but the tsunami of selfie stickers hadn't, even predawn coach loads of 'em kept on arriving. Late afternoon on the second day the deluge of people actually stepped up a gear, as large wedding parties now started to arrive and vie for what little space remained around the church - it appears this little church attracts people (mainly from the East it seems) to have pro shots taken of them in full wedding regalia, even though their actual wedding may have taken place many weeks or even months earlier and many thousands of miles away. Then just as the sun was beginning to set disappointingly behind the thick clouds behind me, a huge storm front rose up over the Southern Alps in front of me and behind the Church, with lots of thunder and lightening and the crowds of weddings shoots and selfie stickers etc finally began to fade away and the scene went totally quiet. Then a small hole opened up in the black clouds behind me to reveal a sliver of light and heat from the setting sun, which then started to bounce warm rays through the gap and across the lake to hit the tops of the storm clouds, colouring them a sort of salmon pink hue crossed with peach, which lasted for no more than five minutes, at which point myself and three other photographers leapt out of our vehicles and moved in to have the whole place to ourselves.

If you go here and I highly recommend that you do, then just park in the car park in front of the Church and spend an hour or two people watching, it is amazing and a very interesting and enjoyable thing to behold, as there are families, individuals, wannabe model shoots, wedding shoots and the inescapable gurning selfie stickers, all vying for the slightest bit of space in front of the Church from predawn until dark

This image is a three shot stitched pano using my new A7R2, which is a camera that I find to be as equally amazing in its resolution as it is mind bendingly frustrating to use. Several times on this trip I just wanted to kick it in the nearest river and watch it sink like a rock, but then to review an image on the screen and gawp at the amazing detail, even using my old Canon lenses, suddenly made it all worth while. I really love/hate this camera in equal measure and if Canon bit the bullet and came to their senses as Nikon have done and used the A7R2 sensor in one of their Cameras, I would ditch this time consuming and will sapping menu diving kiddies toy in an instant, but until then, I will just have to put up with it and the truly amazing resolution that awaits me beneath its proliferation of tiny indecipherable buttons and menu driven interface, that I am sure a bored baboon could have done a better job of designing.

Dave

[Chairman Bill]

Don't hold back, Dave; tell us what you really think about your new Sony

Lovely photo, BTW.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Don't hold back, Dave; tell us what you really think about your new Sony

Lovely photo, BTW.

Agreed.
I find my lowly Sony RX10 to be quite good in most respects. I don't miss my old Canon 5D2 and lenses at all. The built-in Zeiss zoom lens goes from 24m  to 200mm (FF equivalent) and is sharp throughout.

[RSL]

Hi Dave. Welcome back. Fine picture. It looks like HDR.

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

Don't hold back, Dave; tell us what you really think about your new Sony

Lovely photo, BTW.

Glad you enjoyed my little camera review there Bill 

Hi Dave. Welcome back. Fine picture. It looks like HDR.

Thanks Russ and yes you are correct, well to some extent anyway, because you see the files you get out of this absolutely hatefully designed piece of superb photographic equipment, means that I can push and stretch pixels about to my hearts content, and pass the same file through the RAW converter as many times as I like, but with widely different exposures etc,. It's a bit like working with a never ending rubber band full of image data, especially when compared to my old easy to use and beautifully designed Canon, which I suppose means that the much admired blocked up solid shadows or the totally blown out highlight of the old film days and earlier digital, is now very much a thing of the past, which I don't know if it's a good thing or not photographically speaking, but all I can say is that for me at least, while ever there is usable noise free pixel data lurking in both the shadows and the highlights for almost any scene other than direct sunlight or in an unlit cave, then I am certainly going to dig them out and use them, all of them.

But yes I have still bracketed shots where I thought it might be necessary or to be safe and occasionally found myself doing so just out of habit alone, but honestly I don't know if I need to or even want to any more, what with an 80mb uncompressed Raw being dumped onto the card each time I fumble for and then find the shutter release, or as is more common select the off switch whenever I am trying to change the aperture through the terribly designed aperture wheel (arghhh) or is it the exposure wheel (aaarrrggghhh!), because the bucket loads of information I find in each and every one of these plump and juicy data rich files, is just too tempting to leave alone.

So given this fact, the question then has to be, has Sony with their amazing BSI sensored cameras ruined traditional photography, or at least the old style of photography and what we are more used to seeing? Well it depends which side of the argument you are coming from I suppose, but for me and now having somewhere between 14 and 15 stops available, when my old Canon probably had around 10 stops on a good day and even then a couple of those were noisy, well what's a guy to do?

Well I will tell you what I am going to do with all those plump data fat pixels, I've paid for 'em, so I'm gonna use 'em, would by my answer 

Thanks for welcoming me back guys, I really have missed you 

[davidgp]

Nice to see you around again Dave...

Lovely photo and really nice story about the process of taking it...

I have also switch to Sony in the last months... About the camera I'm ok... I was just able to have everything I use in three or four buttons... My major pains are in the metabones adaptor... Although since I updated its firmware and switched it to advance mode it seems more stable...


Enviado desde mi iPad utilizando Tapatalk

[Zorki5]

Images that look like HDR ones and yet do not look over-processed are few and very far between; yours is one of them. Very nice one.

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

Nice to see you around again Dave...

Lovely photo and really nice story about the process of taking it...

I have also switch to Sony in the last months... About the camera I'm ok... I was just able to have everything I use in three or four buttons... My major pains are in the metabones adaptor... Although since I updated its firmware and switched it to advance mode it seems more stable...

Enviado desde mi iPad utilizando Tapatalk

Hi Dave, good to hear from you, I thought you had decided to buy the 5DSR instead?

I haven't had any problems with my Metabones adapter, but I have heard there may be a few counterfeit fake adapters now making their way onto the market, don't know if this is true or not, but heard it online here (Wayne talks about fakes at around 2mins 15sec - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWRq8UoZxVw).

Images that look like HDR ones and yet do not look over-processed are few and very far between; yours is one of them. Very nice one.

Thanks Zorki5, yes I suppose that is what I am doing here, a sort of subtle HDR created through an assortment of luminosity masks, colour masks and layer blending etc, glad you like the result 

Dave

[BobDavid]

I acquired an open box Sony A7r. It's a love/hate camera. I reach for my Olympus E-M5 II four out of five times. If I have a particular shot in mind that requires either or all: a 3:2 aspect ratio, high resolution, or low noise/high ISO performance, the Sony is great.

I'd probably reach for the Sony more if it had IBIS. But first gen A7x cameras do not. The pro and premium Oly lenses are outstanding, so under the right conditions,  the Oly files are extremely clean and sharp.

[davidgp]

Hi Dave, good to hear from you, I thought you had decided to buy the 5DSR instead?

I haven't had any problems with my Metabones adapter, but I have heard there may be a few counterfeit fake adapters now making their way onto the market, don't know if this is true or not, but heard it online

I think it is an original one... I bought it from directly from one of the most serious photography shops in Barcelona... All the firmware updates were ok... And the RRS L adaptor fits like a glove...

My main problem... Although lately is quite rare, it is that when using it in a tripod... Sometimes the camera loses the connection to the adaptor and I can change the aperture... At that stage the only solution it is to turn off the camera... Disconnect lens from adaptor, reconnect it, disconnect camera from adaptor, reconnect it, and turn everything on again...



Enviado desde mi iPad utilizando Tapatalk

[luxborealis]

Great to have you back, Dave. I was thinking about you the other day as my wife and I contemplated Skye (and Mull).

Typically I enjoy your photos - balanced and seemingly "real". I know art doesn't have to be "real", not does photography but with 9/10s of the presentation saying "real" the last 1/10th should comply. What I'm saying is this photo has all the hallmarks of a great image with lots of movement in the composition and atmosphere and a great moment captured, however, from my perspective, the photo appears over-processed. I always feel that when a photo looks HDR the photographer has stretched the technique too far as is the case here (even if it not truly an exposure blend). I'm surprised an HDR-style effect is even contemplated in this case as you quite rightly point out there is no great contrast beyond what a Sony sensor can handle within its huge DR. As a result of the HDR-style, the colours come across as fanciful. I know colours like these exist naturally, especially with the lighting you had, but, combined with the HDR effect, the colours come across more like candy.

Don't get me wrong, I love the photo and if others love it even more, great. However, I can't help but look at it and think, "Hmmmm, over done, too bad". It can still be a great photo with a more natural contrast and less fanciful colours.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Hi Dave, and welcome back to posting (pictures)!

I am looking at the image on my office computer (terrible or non existent color management) and do not have much time to elaborate, but the obvious to me is the following: clouds too dark and the church too bright (probably the reason for Russ' assessment as HDR-ish).

[RSL]

Exactly, Slobodan. Next Tuesday I'll be lecturing on HDR to a photo club down here in Florida. My principal recommendation, as always, will be "The best HDR doesn't look like HDR." Here's an example. Those with eyes to see can't miss overdone HDR.

[Dave (Isle of Skye)]

Here is a screen grab of a single raw file version of a shot of the Church of the Good Shepherd just before I took the pano shots, as you can see I haven't actually pushed the colours that far in PS.

This screen grab also shows you how hard you can push those luminosity based sliders with the A7R2 files with out hurting the pixels at all.

Dave