Two Questions: Lens and Camera

[Groucho]

So does that explain the detail/sharpness/clarity that I see in a certain someone's photos? **cough-Jeff-cough** Not to give him a big head, but his recent photos is the best example that I can think of. For instance, I took this shot below and I know that if I had left the shutter open longer or widened the aperture it probably would have come out "brighter" but it seems that might photos lack that "wow". It doesn't have that sharpness/clarity that I am looking for.

Some of that is from the camera itself but much of it is after the fact - most obviously the post-processing that is done (Gdad seems to have worked out some very effective settings for his photos - not to say they're not good out of the camera but no doubt he has refined his PP work to bring out the best, plus I believe he's using mild HDR on many of the recent stuff, Jeff correct me if I'm wrong!) but also the resizing. If the image is resized poorly or has too much compression, you will very quickly lose the sharpness and clarity of the full-resolution version. A few months ago, I spent a bunch of time re-exporting most of my web photos from Lightroom at a higher quality and changing settings on my gallery to get larger photos, and it definitely makes a difference. I may even drop my watermark completely because it's one more step where the jpg gets opened and resaved at a loss of quality.

As for the hardware - certainly it doesn't hurt using FF if for no other reason than the lens doesn't have to work as hard (with an APS-sensor DSLR, you're effectively cropping any time you use a full-frame lens)... but as long as your lens can out-resolve your sensor, sharpness should not be a problem whether you're on APS or FF; you should have the same per-pixel sharpness. UWA is an area where FF does have an advantage as you encounter less aberrations - for example, a 10mm fisheye for an APS sensor camera is going to have more purple fringing than a 16mm fisheye for a FF camera, just because it's wider and it's harder to control such things. Same deal with non-fisheye UWAs.

As for the Tokina... well, you can get the Pentax 12-24mm (which is a rebadged Tokina) or the Sigma 10-20mm. Pentax also has a 14mm and a 15mm prime, the latter is brand new and apparently pretty amazing. There are no Tokinas for Pentax because most Tokinas are actually Pentax optical designs with Tokina outsides (10-17mm fisheye, 16-50mm, 50-135mm, etc)... Hoya owns both so there's no sense in competing. There is a lot of hope in the Pentax world that we'll see a Pentax-badged version - ideally a * lens which would mean weathersealing and SDM focusing - but we'll see. Pentax has been much more quiet lately about what's on their lens roadmap. Their medium-format DSLR (off the top of my head, it'll be 2x the sensor size of a full-frame DSLR) will be out very soon finally, and the rumors are pretty strong that they'll be going full-frame before long. There's also room IMHO for another body inbetween the K-x and the K-7... oh, and an EVIL design like the m4/3rds which is strongly rumored.

I guess to sum up - don't despair, the Sony 6mp sensor in your K100D (same used in the Nikon 6mp ones) was a great sensor that was completely capable of sharp, colorful photos. Firework photos in particular are relatively easy - since you're usually stopped down pretty far, most any lens will produce very sharp photos; much of the work is in the timing, keeping yourself from blowing out highlights, and post-processing.

 

[Gdad]

Well here is my take on it- mostly I fiddled with the distortion last night. There is a lot going on with that in the original file and I'm not sure if I made it better or worse. But between the lens distortion and the fact that the camera was not level on the tripod made it kind of difficult. (Psst- THESE work great for UWA tripod shots) Aside from that I just made an effort to get the best exposure and open up the shadows with the raw file, tried to lighten the partners statue some more by hand, then did a little noise reduction and Topaz photo pop. (Not sure if that is considered 'HDR' or not- I think mainly it adds some saturation and sharpening but it may have some exposure correction also.) By the way- I really like the way the Pentax picks up the color of the castle- a lot of mine get blown out on one channel if I'm not careful.

 

[Groucho]

Nice work. I would have gone a little further with the color balance too - the sky and statue are still a little bit "brown". Maybe just a hair cooler.

If you're cheap like me, you can also try a level like this. BTW we were talking about in-body stabilization and the "no penalties" - it also gives you things like the K-7's ability to automatically rotate & level the sensor if you want, up to 1 degree in either direction (which is more than it sounds when you actually see a demo of it), combined with the built-in level means it's really quick 'n' easy to get level horizons.

 

[RBennett]

WOW!! That's amazing!! I totally need to learn how to do better with my post-processing. Right now I'm stuck using Elements 5.0 and the only areas that I work with are the overall exposure/etc when you open the RAW file, noise reduction, and clone stamping out blemishes and stuff. But I know that I still have a MILLION things to learn. Do you have any recommendations on how to learn or what to use? I know that you like to use Topaz, and that's something both me DW and I want, but having the right tools does nothing unless I know how to use them. Thanks again SO much!

 

[Groucho]

I would recommend downloading a trial copy of Lightroom and giving that a shot. That's really the key, to me, to doing fairly serious PP without too much effort or time.

In the meantime, the software that came with your camera is not all that bad though certainly a bit "clunkier" than Lightroom... plus it often will produce more pleasing colors than Lightroom will on that camera. You can probably download the latest version from their site, too.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I've mentioned it before. We really need a Post Processing 101 thread around here.