today's attempt at a landscape.

Derrel · Nov 1, 2015

Well...using a 150-600mm zoom lens is probably not the best strategy for a beginning landscape shooter, at least in small areas like city parks. It will force you to be quite far away from your scene, and the "bottom end" being a narrow-angle 150mm foca length puts a lot of equipment-dictated direction onto the photos you can make. Meaning, with a shortest length of 150mm, if you need to move back "a bit", then "a bit" might very well mean 100 feet, or 150 feet back, perhaps more.

Also, everything that lens sees is a flattened image, with the background magnified and "squished" to a high degree. You're also using a long, heavy, awkward lens, and that means it will take tremendous discipline to move around to find the exact, right camera position that the lens forces onto the shot.

This would be a better lens for longer-distance "scenic" type landscape shots, such as at the ocean shore, in the mountains, or when shooting more distant shots. A city park is a fairly confined space for a 150-600mm zoom lens and its angles of view. Can it be used successfully? Yes, I think so, but keep in mind that it has a very,very narrow angle of view, so the camera placement must be very precisely chosen at such a close distance!

You are basically using a most-unusual tool for the job. Kind of like a big, industrial nail gun to drive a couple of carpet tacks...

jcdeboever · Nov 1, 2015

He was using the Hubble for that? Oh my...

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jcdeboever · Nov 2, 2015

Like that a lot. Love how the foreground color line breaks the third. Interesting solution. Well done.

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dannylightning · Nov 2, 2015

That's a nice edit. Thanks

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dannylightning · Nov 3, 2015

Derrel said:
Well...using a 150-600mm zoom lens is probably not the best strategy for a beginning landscape shooter, at least in small areas like city parks. It will force you to be quite far away from your scene, and the "bottom end" being a narrow-angle 150mm foca length puts a lot of equipment-dictated direction onto the photos you can make. Meaning, with a shortest length of 150mm, if you need to move back "a bit", then "a bit" might very well mean 100 feet, or 150 feet back, perhaps more.

Also, everything that lens sees is a flattened image, with the background magnified and "squished" to a high degree. You're also using a long, heavy, awkward lens, and that means it will take tremendous discipline to move around to find the exact, right camera position that the lens forces onto the shot.

This would be a better lens for longer-distance "scenic" type landscape shots, such as at the ocean shore, in the mountains, or when shooting more distant shots. A city park is a fairly confined space for a 150-600mm zoom lens and its angles of view. Can it be used successfully? Yes, I think so, but keep in mind that it has a very,very narrow angle of view, so the camera placement must be very precisely chosen at such a close distance!

You are basically using a most-unusual tool for the job. Kind of like a big, industrial nail gun to drive a couple of carpet tacks...

i was in the parking lot of the park and that is the lens that was on the camera when i though hey, that looks like a nice landscape to try out and it was one of the few things i could get far enough away from with that lens.

now from what i have been reading lots of guys seem to like the 70-200mm lenses for landscapes, at what point does the long focal length start to squash the image, that was at 150mm.

from what i am seeing is with the right and tighter framing my landscapes would be half way descent.

runnah · Nov 3, 2015

Not applicable but I love my 24-105mm f/4 for landscapes.

Not my best but took this this past weekend. I am really starting to only shoot at tighter focal ranges. It makes you work a bit harder and certainly forces you to rethink locations.

@60mm

K52A0281 by runnah555, on Flickr

@105mm

K52A0223 by runnah555, on Flickr

Derrel · Nov 3, 2015

Yeah, like you said, from the parking lot, the 150-600mm lens gave you a shot opportunity! I know what you mean! I think the 70-200mm lens is a good landscape lens...there are a lot of useful lengths in a 70-200, for many,many types of photography, especially with a FF sensor, but it's also got a good deal of usefulness with an APS-C camera, especially if the landscapes are not close-up or small-scale landscapes.

At what point does focal length start to cause that "telephoto compression" look? (I put that phrase telephoto compression in quotes because that's not a really proper term, but people know what we're talking about nonetheless.) I think it starts to become very noticeable at around the 135mm on Full Frame focal length; at 135mm, the background objects become noticeably larger, and appear "closer than in reality". By 180mm, background objects are looking pretty magnified, and distances are appearing to be closer than in reality. By 200mm, the effects of so-called telephoto compression are quite visible. Using a 300mm length lens, the telephoto look is very strong, and also, the angle of view behind the main subject becomes pretty narrow in angle. The 400,500,and 600mm focal lengths have extremely narrow angle of view, high degree of magnification of background objects, and extremely strong distance compression effect.

A strong distance compression effect is often referred to as a flattened perspective, or a compressed perspective. These longer focal lengths are actually quite useful in longer-range landscape situations, meaning from 100 yards out to infinity. There **is** a real place for very long,long telephoto lenses in landscape photography. Many people really like the way the long,long lenses make the real world look "lensy"...long telephoto lenses make things look very different from the way the human eye and brain tends to see things.

dchung00 · Nov 5, 2015

Personally I don't find anything about this image interesting. Not trying to sound like a buzzkill, but if your subject is supposed to be the bridge try to find a unique/different angle. You can also utilize techniques like the rules of thirds, the golden hour, etc. to spice up your image!

AlanKlein · Nov 5, 2015

Maybe you can combine your nice bird shots with a landscape like this. You don't always have to use a telephoto lens.

Jim Walczak · Nov 6, 2015

Over-all, I think you're getting some really good advice here. To reiterate or expand on Pearl Poet's comment, whether I'm shooting critters, people or landscape, I very much follow the philosophy of "simplify and eliminate" If it doesn't contribute to your composition, then remove it from the frame (either by moving the object physically or moving yourself). To use my favorite analogy, imagine you're shooting a monkey at the zoo (because "monkey" is easier to spell and type than "orangutan", LOL). As you look thru the viewfinder, ask yourself "what is this shot about?". Is it about the other people watching the monkey? Is it about the monkey's habitat? Is it about that glob of poop the monkey just flung on the wall?? Or is it about the monkey. Once you've determined what the shot is about, then simply remove anything from the frame that doesn't contribute to the composition.

Also, to expand on weepete's comment just a bit, while I do (mostly) agree with the idea of fore, mid and background regarding landscapes, if you're going to follow that concept, do remember to pay attention to which lens you use as well. I see where you shot this with a 150-500...and regardless of your distance from the subject, I would be so bold as to suggest that's just NOT an appropriate lens for landscapes. Remember, the greater the focal length, the more you images tend to "flatten out", thus minimizing or eliminating the distinction between foreground and background, etc.. While it's hard to say without seeing the actual scene, I suspect that if you got MUCH closer and used a wide angle, you probably would have gotten better results than you did using the super-dooper zoomsky...in other words, don't use a jack hammer where you really only need a framing hammer

That all said...and I'll admit this is perhaps a tad subjective and most certainly my own personal opinion...I really think you could have used a better subject. Over the years I've tried to shoot many such bridges and I'm seldom happy with the results. I've tried a variety of angles, a variety of lenses, a variety of lighting, etc., and they just usually leave me wanting. At the risk of making excuses here, I've come to the conclusion that it's not me - it's simply the bridges! LOL!!! This is probably going to sound like a MASSIVE rationalization, but I think the truth is that there's just not really a lot of visual appeal to bridges found with scenery such as this. It's pretty in a park and otherwise works well with the natural ambiance, however when I look at the bridge itself...there's not really a whole lot there to knock my socks off. If you were to look at that bridge completely isolated from the scene, would you really standing there thinking to yourself "Wow! Cool bridge!"? See what I'm saying? An old stone bridge will usually have some degree of visual appeal and certainly some of those highly ornate oriental bridges make for interesting compositions, but what you have there is basically a simple wooden bridge such as many folks see in parks and such all the time...I've walked over many such bridges countless times...nothing really special or that interesting about them. I'm not trying to be rude here AT ALL, but I strongly suspect that this is one of those cases where you could examine the bridge from countless angles, get perfect light, perfect exposure, yadda, yadda, yadda and no matter what, you'll probably be disappointed with the shot. -IF- there was some other interesting element here...say a bridge and groom standing on the bridge kissing (where the bridge is essentially just a simple prop for the composition), the photo would likely have worked MUCH better, but I just don't think the visual appeal of the bridge is strong enough on it's own to really carry the composition.

Just my own opinions, but I hope they help!