Landscape Portfolio

[Hans Kruse]

Yep, you've got your procedures down just right. Good work.

Hi Dale,

Thanks a lot.

[Hans Kruse]

Hans,

I am 100% aligned with Tim here, you have some very nice images here, but others are either too similar of lacking impact a little.

I am just going through a very similar process at the moment, and understand very well the difficulty of editing, but it is a must do task.

Cheers,
Bernard

Hi Bernard,

Beatiful images on your site. The biggest pain for me was to narrow my selection down to the number presented. Now that I have gone through these several times, I wonder if my selection was actually the right one  
So I will have to revise that and also narrow it down further. But I agree that it is now only a needed but also rather good process to go through.

[MR.FEESH]

39 IS GOD.

Elby

[bretedge]

You have added lots of great work to your portfolio, Hans!  I really enjoyed the images and am happy to see that you've been busy with your camera over the last couple of years.  Thanks for sharing them.

[NikoJorj]

Hard to say much more... Gorgeous images, really!
I was also moved to see in the first page my 2 formers italian holidays (Toscana -or not far, Emilia Romagna?-, and Abbruzi - I got almost the same framing from a Campo Imperatore view, but without such a good light).

As said, the landscape gallery could even improve with a bit of editing down to 1 or 2 pages... Tough work indeed.  

[Hans Kruse]

39 IS GOD.

Elby

Thanks Elby, I also find this one of my best.

[Hans Kruse]

You have added lots of great work to your portfolio, Hans!  I really enjoyed the images and am happy to see that you've been busy with your camera over the last couple of years.  Thanks for sharing them.

Hi Bret,

Long time no see! Thanks for your comments and I have been very busy. I have just returned from Lima in Peru from a 3 week shooting. Something like walking in the footsteps of the painter Enrique Polanco http://www.enriquepolanco.com/.
I may post a message about that later on.

[Hans Kruse]

Hard to say much more... Gorgeous images, really!
I was also moved to see in the first page my 2 formers italian holidays (Toscana -or not far, Emilia Romagna?-, and Abbruzi - I got almost the same framing from a Campo Imperatore view, but without such a good light).

As said, the landscape gallery could even improve with a bit of editing down to 1 or 2 pages... Tough work indeed.  

Hi Nicolas,

Tuscany was great, but I was surprised to see how small an area that is really worth while photographing when we speak about landscapes. Abruzzo is in my view one of the larger oversigts in terms of photographic beauty. I'm so amazed by this area that has so many fantastic views within a fairly small area. Especially Gran Sasso.

[mike.online]

Hi Mike,

Most of the images were edited using Lightroom 2.x (at the moment 2.3RC) and I use the local adjustment tools quite a bit. The graduated filter is a godsend for me as well as the brush tool. These tools makes it really unncessary for me to use Photoshop. I do use Photoshop CS3 from time to time when I use tone mapping. But that is now much more seldom now given the Lightroom 2.x tools. I can get a similar effect (as with tone mapping) that I like sometimes using the fill light and recovery towards compensating tone curve adjustments and graduated filters when I need certain parts of the image to fall into the number of stops that can be represented on a screen or a print. I also now use the Lightroom 2.x camera curves under camera calibration. I use the landscape tone curve a lot and I really like it. I use the vibrance on a moderate level and no saturation. I also use HDR techniques rather seldom. I find the that the number of stops available from the 1Ds mk3 (and my former 5D) is typically enough when using the adjustment techniques mentioned. But there are cases where this is not enough, though.

But as you say the most important thing is choosing the light and time of day. I'm typically out before sunrise and often before twilight time starts and stop shooting 1-2 hours after sunrise depending the time of year. I'm most happy when the weather forecast says sun, rain and cloudy at the same time  

Many thanks for your comments.

Thanks!! I've been working in LR2.x for a while now, and I'm working with both the basic sliders as well as the curve sliders. It is too bad that the program takes so much CPU and RAM power to run, it brings my machine to its knees when I do local edits.

I enjoyed the explenation on the HDR and vibrance info, I was wondering about that! also interesting is your comment on the DR of the 5D and 1DsIII. I'm working with a 30D and I sometimes find myself wanting a bit more shadow and highlight room, but I usually just think its my errors... i'm beginning to wonder if it is the sensor DR in the 30D. I've wanted to upgrade to the 5DII, but have had a bit of trouble really qualifying the need, maybe this is another reason (). any thoughts on the validity of that?

[Hans Kruse]

Thanks!! I've been working in LR2.x for a while now, and I'm working with both the basic sliders as well as the curve sliders. It is too bad that the program takes so much CPU and RAM power to run, it brings my machine to its knees when I do local edits.

I enjoyed the explenation on the HDR and vibrance info, I was wondering about that! also interesting is your comment on the DR of the 5D and 1DsIII. I'm working with a 30D and I sometimes find myself wanting a bit more shadow and highlight room, but I usually just think its my errors... i'm beginning to wonder if it is the sensor DR in the 30D. I've wanted to upgrade to the 5DII, but have had a bit of trouble really qualifying the need, maybe this is another reason (). any thoughts on the validity of that?

Hi Mike,

If you look at he measurements from DxO Labs here http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Image.../(brand2)/Canon and even if you click on print you will at most see a one stop difference.

The biggest reason for upgrading to the 5D mk2 over the 30D would in my opinion be the larger resolution and the better detail, sharpness, noise characteristics when printing at the same size. You may also find that the AF system in the 5D mk2 is better than the 30D. The 30D has the same AF system as the 20D and when I upgraded 3 years ago from the 20D to the 5D I found that the AF system was more precise and since the 5D mk2 has the same AF hardware but better software handling of AF I would expect that you would see a visibly better AF system in the 5D mk2. You need to be more careful when you are shooting with the5D mk2 to get the details sharp (looking at 100%) so that you can enjoy the details in very large prints. The live view on the 5D mk2 (as I use a lot on the 1Ds mk3) will help you to get absolute critical focus where you want it when using a tripod. There is a real difference between shooting with and without a tripod using the high resolution sensors except when having fast shutter speeds.

Having said all this, I believe you can achive much more DR in your images than you thought available when using the local editing tools of Lightroom to darken and brighten certain areas of your photos even from the 30D (use the graduated filters and if you haven't then take a look at the tutorials from LL on Lightroom 2, it's worth it!). But clearly the images from the 5D mk2 will be more forgiving since there are so many more pixels to give your final image. Going from 8MP to 21MP is a big step and I can't see how you would regret it. If you are unsure try to rent og lend a 5D mk2 from one of your friends. But not just for DR reasons.

[mike.online]

as i've been lusting over that camera, I've seen much of the DxO and whatnot reports on the 5D.... although its nice to hear that the AF is superior. the croppability, IQ and noise are really what i look forward to the most. I've used the live view to get manual focusing down, and i found that to do a huge asset, makes shooting low DOF much easier.

as for LR, i need to upgrade my hardware before I will have enough patience for the local editing tools. I do however use photoshop on occasion for local edits, but find that with lightroom doing 85% of what i want to do, it is a real pain to transfer between programs for many different shots. I did buy the LL camera to print, and the LR 2.0 guide vids, very informative indeed.