Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: armand on September 30, 2015, 09:57:22 pm
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This time playing with the Samyang 135mm F2, manual focus, on Nikon mount.
This is a very well behaved lens, I like it a lot. It is sharp even at F2 (in the center at least, at that aperture I didn't look anywhere else), good bokeh. For full body small group (4-5 people) portraits the bokeh is better than the Nikon 85mm F1.8 which gets a weird circular pattern of the bokeh at that longer distance.
Manual focus is easier than I expected even at F2.
PS. for some reason I can hold it much steadier than the Nikon lenses; don't know if it's the weight or the lack of IS (paradoxically)
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I especially like photo #2, but might suggest a little more contrast. Also, did you consider processing the 4th image in bw? I think it would be worth a try. Incidentally, it looks like you have a winner with that Samyang lens. I've considered getting one myself. - Bob
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I love the last one and also the second one. Try Bob's suggestion for the fourth, color doesn't seem to bring anything to this image.
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Hi Armand, The fourth is by far the best, and I don't agree with Bob or Francois. I think color's important in that picture -- especially the color of that kid's hair. Try a quick conversion and you'll see what I mean. I did it and I can tell you that the kid becomes too much like the stump. I do wish you'd shot it at f/8 instead of f/5.6 so the stump were a bit sharper. The broken overcast was a wonderful bonus for this shot.
Very nice.
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I like the fourth one too. You may want to try cropping it just below the dead tree stump in the pond (or clone out the stump and crop a little higher). That way the viewer will do a double take on whether he is peering down into the clouds or onto a surface of water. You may want to crop out some of the detritus on the conduit--the clutter is distracting.
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The illustrator in me has just kicked in. In the fourth image I thought; Photoshop/Edit/Content-Aware Scale.
Cheers,
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3rd image...very nice
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Thank you.
I saw the fourth image in color and I don't recall if I tried bw at all. I did try to crop under the stump but just wouldn't work; cloning is a good idea , I'll give it a try. I'm not sure what you mean by content-aware scale.
The second photo has already some contrast in it and I tried with more and while it works it's a different photo, I thought the current contrast works better with the limited DOF.
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Btw, this lens works well also on a Fuji X-T1 with the Metabones speed booster adapter.
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Photoshop/Edit/Content-Aware Scale
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNhHs4Kk580
It helps you get rid of a lot of boring stuff, if you know what I mean.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pqfVakJw5Qw/Vg8v5fLvUwI/AAAAAAAAAG0/BYisQjBV-zs/s1600/boy.jpg)
Cheers,
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I tried cloning but it's not as good as I was hoping.
I did play with the content aware scaling (thank you for the idea) and I think this version fixes one of the flaws of the original.
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Photoshop/Edit/Content-Aware Scale
ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNhHs4Kk580
It helps you get rid of a lot of boring stuff, if you know what I mean.
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pqfVakJw5Qw/Vg8v5fLvUwI/AAAAAAAAAG0/BYisQjBV-zs/s1600/boy.jpg)
Cheers,
Can't say I agree. This removes some of the visual tension between the boy and the stump. While I'd love to see he stump a bit sharper, I don't think squeezing the shot helps it.
YMMV
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"Can't say I agree. This removes some of the visual tension between the boy and the stump. While I'd love to see he stump a bit sharper, I don't think squeezing the shot helps it."
"The illustrator in me has just kicked in. In the fourth image I thought; Photoshop/Edit/Content-Aware Scale."
This was just an example of the difference between an Illustrator and a Photographer. As an Illustrator you are trying
to explain the relationships between things. As a photographer you are mainly trying to tell a visual story. Nothing wrong with either approach, I've just been trained to favour the former.
Cheers,
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