Passage of Time- Still Pond, Md

[Rick58]

View attachment 36206

I drive by this abandoned home countless times of the way to my trailer on the Chesapeake's Eastern Shore. Today I made the trip just for this shot. I've made the decision I either need to get a better digital or dust off my medium and large format gear. I realize the D200 is an older camera, but to continually get noise like this at ISO 400 is ridiculous.
Reasoning: There was a good breeze blowing and I wanted to insure stopping the limb motion. I chose 1/800 which was probably excessive. Next time I think I'll shot it with my RB67. :banghead:
I wish now I would have shot at 1/400 @ 200 but I didn't want to come home with motion blur. Anyway, I'd appreciate comments and/or thoughts.

f16
1/800
ISO 400

 

[MK3Brent]

Hi, Rick.

Looks like you missed focus, even at f/16!

Looks a little soft on my end.

I really love these old houses, they're the best to shoot.

Sometimes, a wide angle and up close to these houses comes out really well.

I look forward to more photos!
You liking the D200 so far?

 

[Rick58]

Liking 200? I'm ready to use it for a boat anchor.
Noise at ISO 400
Someone pointed out some hot pixels and now soft focus. I was focused on the front of the house, about 1/3 back at f16. The old eye's aren't what they used to be, but even they can hit the broad side of a house...

Glass is clean, camera fosuses and looks sharp in the finder, but the photos looks like they are taken with a $20 Instamatic
If you look at my last egg shots in my gallery, they have the same softness and they were taken with my 55 Macro Nikkor, this house was with the 18-70 kit lens.

 

[MK3Brent]

Are you manually focusing?

Are you using the focus indicator on the display through the view finder? (I believe it's lower left inside the view finder on the D200.)

 

[Rick58]

Are you manually focusing?

Are you using the focus indicator on the display through the view finder? (I believe it's lower left inside the view finder on the D200.)

Auto focus, and yep, the green dot in the lower left corner of the finder.
I just looked at all the RAW files from today and everyone is about the same degree of "softness". The only shot in my gallery that appears half way sharp is my peppers, but thats only because they are only blown up to 4x5.

 

[MK3Brent]

It could be your lenses, in all honesty.

I shoot a D200 (or used to anyway, it's just sitting on my desk now.)
The 35mm 1.8 DX produces some pretty sharp images.

I have one somewhere, if you want it I'll send it to you.
Give it a shot, see if you can get some sharp photos.

 

[Rick58]

Thanks for the offer. I sent you a
PM. I don't understand why the Macro Nikkor and the kit lens would have the same affect.

 

[Rick58]

Well, I see this went over like a sack of rocks. Thanks to Brent, I at least know my PC was plugged in when I posed it

 

[FanBoy]

Nice find, Rick. I would also like to see more intrusive angles of the house. The pine branches on the left seem to steal from the subject.

 

[Rick58]

Nice find, Rick. I would also like to see more intrusive angles of the house. The pine branches on the left seem to steal from the subject.

Thanks. This turned out to be a noisy, soft focused train wreck, so I'm going to give it another go. My idea was to frame the house with those evergreens and overhead branch. I agree it didn't quite reach the mark and I'm not particularly fond of the results either. I think I'll move in a little and eliminate them all together.

I hear what you're saying about the intrusive angles, but that's not really me. I like my architecture, especially in B&W, to be neat, clean and plum. Boring I suppose to some. That's probably one reason the evergreens don't sit well with me.

Unfortunately, this is 100 miles away. Hopefully it will be there for another month or two until I start going down regularly

 

[tirediron]

Great subject matter Rick (technical issues aside)... you need to get some inside shots! I wish there were structures in my area that looked like that.

As for your camera, the D200 should do better than that, and the 18-70 lens is VERY sharp when stopped down a couple of stops, but I've rarely used it stopped that far down; I almost wonder if you're getting some difraction effect? Given how cheap the D300 & 300s have become, it might be worth looking at one of those.

 

[Rick58]

Thanks. Just to show off the high quality output I'm getting, here a sootc 100% snip of the house eve's. Geez...I think I'll go back to my entry level Sony

View attachment 36265

Any ideas anyone?

 

[mishele]

Rick, pick me up the next time you're going here...lol It looks like an awesome place to shoot! Nice job on the first one.
Did you go inside?

 

[Rick58]

Did you go inside?

No it's right along the road and part of a workng farm. I actually felt bad, because as I drove past the abandon driveway, I saw the owner has it posted. I'm going to do it right next time and ask even to go on the yard. If it were mine, I'd expect the same.

 

[Overread]

When you're processing your RAW photos check the sharpening tab - by default the RAW processor should apply a degree of sharpening to your photos (typically called Capture sharpening). This is important as RAW photos without any sharpening applied at all will always look softer than they should.

If you've disabled the capture sharpening it would go a long way to explain why you're seeing this sudden softness in all your photos.



The shutter speed, ISO and aperture should all be fine, f16 is getting close to where diffraction starts to really show (it tends to start taking effect after around f8-10 but its not till around f16 or so that it really becomes noticeable). Maybe try pulling back to f13, but f16 should still be more usable than this I would think.