Austin City Scapes

oFUNGUSo · Oct 21, 2015

Hello.......figured I might as well post some of these here!

Mostly been shooting cityscape around Austin lately. Still obviously working out some kinks but I'm pretty happy with some of these. A lot of my issues lately are happening post processing, issues with consistency in color between shots in the same set, and issues with contrast. Also still working out how to do exposure stacking well.....I'm still getting weird results some times. There's a certain level of sharpness and detail I see from others who do cityscapes that i just cant seem to hit. I'm not sure if its glass, settings, post processing....all of the above, or what, but its escaping me.

Certainly open to tips!

oFUNGUSo · Oct 21, 2015

couple more

SoulfulRecover · Oct 21, 2015

glad to see another Austinite on here

Malavok · Oct 21, 2015

Fantastic pics! #1 is my favorite, though it should be tilted slightly to the left (I'm pretty sensitive to tilt, though!)

It's hard to say why you aren't getting the sharp, crisp detail that you desire without knowing what gear you're using. Color (i.e., white balance) is easy to fix if you shoot in RAW.

I also highly recommend Lou Neff Point at sunrise. You can park at the Zilker lawn loop (where it first curves left) and walk down to the overlook (go down to the water if you don't want the overlook platform in the shot); best to get there 30 minutes before sunrise. This is a good time of year; later in the winter the sun will rise too far to the south for the reflection over the water and around the skyline. The best sunrises in Austin are in the fall, usually November when a front or storm system starts moving in and the eastern horizon is still open. That will give you a lot of experience with post-processing and stacking; sunrises at Lou Neff with a lot of clouds are difficult to process (speaking from experience).

Don't know if you used one or not -- but for shooting Austin during the daytime you may want a circular polarizer. It will also help at any point along Town lake when the water is calm, if you either want to enhance the reflection or to cut out the reflection and see underneath the water (may or may not want that if there are beer cans hiding down there :05.18-flustered:

)

Malavok · Oct 21, 2015

Oh yea, and the only thing that sucks about Lou Neff is accessibility during ACL.

I would just go to the boardwalk East of I-35 when that happened but I see you've already been there a lot.

oFUNGUSo · Oct 21, 2015

Malavok said:
Fantastic pics! #1 is my favorite, though it should be tilted slightly to the left (I'm pretty sensitive to tilt, though!)

It's hard to say why you aren't getting the sharp, crisp detail that you desire without knowing what gear you're using. Color (i.e., white balance) is easy to fix if you shoot in RAW.

I also highly recommend Lou Neff Point at sunrise. You can park at the Zilker lawn loop (where it first curves left) and walk down to the overlook (go down to the water if you don't want the overlook platform in the shot); best to get there 30 minutes before sunrise. This is a good time of year; later in the winter the sun will rise too far to the south for the reflection over the water and around the skyline. The best sunrises in Austin are in the fall, usually November when a front or storm system starts moving in and the eastern horizon is still open. That will give you a lot of experience with post-processing and stacking; sunrises at Lou Neff with a lot of clouds are difficult to process (speaking from experience).

Don't know if you used one or not -- but for shooting Austin during the daytime you may want a circular polarizer. It will also help at any point along Town lake when the water is calm, if you either want to enhance the reflection or to cut out the reflection and see underneath the water (may or may not want that if there are beer cans hiding down there )

yeah i though it was tilted too, but i line up other browser windows along the buildings and they all seem to be perfectly straight up and down....still it does look like the pic is leaning slightly to me. not sure what thats about!

I'm shooting RAW with a d3200 and an 18-105 kit lens. I think on some of the night shots i have issues with contrast maybe because im messing with shadows and highlights so much, i usually crank the shadows up and drop the highlights, raise exposure then add some clarity and vibrance, then adjust contrast and do some dodge/burn before saving. Another problem im having is that i edit something and it looks perfect to me, then i save it as a Jpeg and it doesn't look quite the same, softer and less contrast, less color. Im not sure what im doing wrong there. Beyond that I've also noticed the images just look different on my home PC versus basically every where else I've looked at them. I've gotten in the habit of making the images just slightly too contrasty, and over colorful, then when i save as jpeg they are close to what i actually want them to look like.

as for the polarizer, i have one for my 18-55, but ive been using the 18-105 and i need to get one......makes a big difference.

love lou neff point!
but this is somewhat of an example of what im talking about. I struggled with this image for some reason and im not sure why....and it still looks a touch hazy to me

shadowlands · Oct 21, 2015

Nice stuff. I'm a couple hours down the road, in the swamp, ha!

Malavok · Oct 21, 2015

oFUNGUSo said:
Malavok said:

Fantastic pics! #1 is my favorite, though it should be tilted slightly to the left (I'm pretty sensitive to tilt, though!)

It's hard to say why you aren't getting the sharp, crisp detail that you desire without knowing what gear you're using. Color (i.e., white balance) is easy to fix if you shoot in RAW.

I also highly recommend Lou Neff Point at sunrise. You can park at the Zilker lawn loop (where it first curves left) and walk down to the overlook (go down to the water if you don't want the overlook platform in the shot); best to get there 30 minutes before sunrise. This is a good time of year; later in the winter the sun will rise too far to the south for the reflection over the water and around the skyline. The best sunrises in Austin are in the fall, usually November when a front or storm system starts moving in and the eastern horizon is still open. That will give you a lot of experience with post-processing and stacking; sunrises at Lou Neff with a lot of clouds are difficult to process (speaking from experience).

Don't know if you used one or not -- but for shooting Austin during the daytime you may want a circular polarizer. It will also help at any point along Town lake when the water is calm, if you either want to enhance the reflection or to cut out the reflection and see underneath the water (may or may not want that if there are beer cans hiding down there )

Click to expand...

yeah i though it was tilted too, but i line up other browser windows along the buildings and they all seem to be perfectly straight up and down....still it does look like the pic is leaning slightly to me. not sure what thats about!

I'm shooting RAW with a d3200 and an 18-105 kit lens. I think on some of the night shots i have issues with contrast maybe because im messing with shadows and highlights so much, i usually crank the shadows up and drop the highlights, raise exposure then add some clarity and vibrance, then adjust contrast and do some dodge/burn before saving. Another problem im having is that i edit something and it looks perfect to me, then i save it as a Jpeg and it doesn't look quite the same, softer and less contrast, less color. Im not sure what im doing wrong there. Beyond that I've also noticed the images just look different on my home PC versus basically every where else I've looked at them. I've gotten in the habit of making the images just slightly too contrasty, and over colorful, then when i save as jpeg they are close to what i actually want them to look like.

as for the polarizer, i have one for my 18-55, but ive been using the 18-105 and i need to get one......makes a big difference.

love lou neff point!
but this is somewhat of an example of what im talking about. I struggled with this image for some reason and im not sure why....and it still looks a touch hazy to me

Image quality is likely a gear issue; the 3200 is great but still not a 7200 or full frame. However, the glass is what is most likely not giving you the best possible quality. Kit lenses are not so nice, IMO. I still think your images look pretty good, though. Consider a prime lens; also do not be stuck with only Nikon/Nikkor if you're on a budget. Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Rokinon/Samyang, all make fantastic lenses of equally amazing quality for less price (just look at reviews of individual lenses -- all these companies and Nikon/Canon make both great and awful lenses).

As for the JPEG issue, are you viewing the image at 100%? If you view it in some sort of preview application (Preview, Windows Photo Viewer, etc.) and the image is 'scaled back' by the application it will likely look worse until you either resize/resample it to a resolution equal to or lower than your monitor and/or view at 100%. Also, in Lightroom (if that's what you use) it might look good at the smaller size when not viewed at 100%, hiding some of the deficiencies. Color problem sounds like calibration issue with your monitor or more likely the color profile being used when exporting from RAW to JPEG.

For highlights and shadows - avoid going to 100% with shadows. Highlights are sometimes okay to pull all the way down. To compensate for that 'flatness' that you get by reducing highlights, you can increase whites. For shadows, you can decrease blacks. Hold the option key (on Mac, at least) while moving around the whites/blacks sliders to see when you start losing detail (it will start 'lighting up').

That last image looks like glare and/or haze. Time of day and lack of circular polarizer will contribute to that.