Where Sea meets Sky

[CODYMAJ]

A nice shot I grabbed the other morning. Any feedback welcome.

My criticism is I still don't seem to get a crisp focus throughout. I would be interested if anyone else agrees, and if so some tips on how I can improve on that.

 

[tirediron]

I'm unable to pull up any EXIF data; what camera/lens/aperture/SS were used here? The image quality looks more like what I'd expect from a consumer-grade kit lens rather than missed focus. The image does need to be levelled as it sinks to the right.

 

[CODYMAJ]

Canon SL2
18-55mm kit lens (makes sense, I forgot I wasn't using my 16-35mm for this shot)
f/4.5
ISO 100
25s Shutter

 

[tirediron]

So there might be a little loss due to the extremely long shutter speed (which seems excessive).

 

[CODYMAJ]

So there might be a little loss due to the extremely long shutter speed (which seems excessive).

Just based on the photo, what would you have suggested as a shutter speed that would have sufficed? I was using a 10-stop ND as well

 

[smoke665]

Actually the image as a whole is overexposed and lacks contrast, sharpening and tweaking in the contrast curve can help, but unfortunately you have a large section of the sky blown. Once you have blown out a section there's nothing to recover. Here's the Histogram from your image.

Note how you're off the right with little data in the shadows or the midtones. Now here's a clip of where the blown sections are. The shadows, midtones and contrast could be tweaked that would give a better sense of sharpness overall, but nothing can be done with the lost highlights.

With a long exposure landscape I wouldn't have used f/4.5. Stopping down will give you a much better DOF.

Using a slow shutter and a ND filter will give you the blurred cottony look on the water, but it's imperative that you are on a solid tripod. Even a breeze can create softness during a long exposure. Also, be aware that shooting into the sun will cause flare. If you're using an ND, that flare will be on the filter.

Lastly there's a lot of dynamic range in the image, more then your camera could handle. There's a couple of solutions, first would be to bracket multiple exposures and blend them post (or in camera, if it supports it), second would be to stack a Gradient ND on top of your ND, to decrease the total dynamic range you're working with.

 

[waday]

So there might be a little loss due to the extremely long shutter speed (which seems excessive).

While I don't disagree, I think it's probably a combination of things.

The linked image is from a 4-minute shutter speed with a much older camera and similar lens (Rebel XSI and 18-55 kit lens) and it doesn't look anything like the OP: VISUAL ECHO!

Is this a crop of the original image? Where was the focus point? It almost looks like not enough DOF? The rocks near the front are in focus, whereas the sign is definitely not in focus?

 

[smoke665]

Based on my earlier comments I played around with the image a little. I took it into Ps, where I duplicated sections from the sky to fill in the blown areas, and tweaked the image. Now note the histogram.

And the image with the blown sections replaced with data, and tweaked for moody clouds.

 

[CODYMAJ]

Smoke665 Thanks for your in-depth response! I do need to make sure I pay more attention to the histogram, as shown. All good points and things I can try to work on for the next one. I may try this shot again once I get my new camera, with a better lens, with tweaks made from suggestions above.

Waday - This is not a crop, but the rest of your questions were my main concern here. I manually focused on the sign, but I still seem to lose focus on that deeper image and you are right, the foreground rocks seem the most focus. Once you move past the rocks (which really is the whole rest of the shot) it seems to lose focus. That is why I was asking what I can do differently to work on this. It seems to repeat itself in my photos and I, of course, would like to improve my skills.