Wednesday, September 29, 2010

F300EXR – Revier Part 14 – A walk in the woods with the new camera …

As mentioned in Part 13, I exchanged my camera yesterday for one with a better lens. Although this one is still not perfect, I have found that the corners are quite acceptable now at 24mm. A slight blur top left, but otherwise pretty good. And the blur top left is not dramatic the way the blur top right was on the previous cam.

So I took it for a brief walk in the woods today to see if the corners are acceptable in practical use … and landscape in the woods is a pretty common usage pattern for a compact. I shot this lovely path at at 24mm and then at 31mm … both look good to me. A bit of processing for exposure and tone, but none for sharpening (except output sharpening after downsizing.) You can follow the leaves right into the corners at the bottom … and the corner bottom left is currently the worst one on the cam.

DSCF0049_24mm[1]

DSCF0051_31mm[1]

A little way up, I found a scene that looked kind of nice, so I set the tripod to record two images, one at f/4.4 and one at f/13. This will reveal two things … that the corners improve slightly with the extra aperture, and that the middle softens slightly … this is either from slight tripod shake (although that would have affected the corner crop too) or it is diffraction beginning to set in (my guess.)

DSCF0056_crops[1]

DSCF0058_crops[1]

Now let’s see them without the crops obscuring the show …

f/4.4

DSCF0056_pmode_f4_4[1] f/13

DSCF0058_mmode_f13[1]

Both are perfectly acceptable …

By the way … the light was very soft here so I switched to Velvia for the last two. I shoot Velvia for the rest of the series, except where I compare them near the end.

Here is a spectacular bit of fungus … the colors are amazing … so much so that I had to juice them even further.

DSCF0060_fungus[1]

And a lovely maple leaf (Oh Canada!) hanging in the breeze … shot at the full 360mm … makes for some very decent looking backgrounds …

DSCF0061_maple_leaf[1]

The following image is a blend of two images. At 360mm from a close distance (4 feet above on tripod), the leaf un the upper left quadrant cannot be in focus at the same time as the log and ground. I happened to shoot it both ways and did not like either version … but painting the leaves in over top fixed the problem perfectly.

DSCF0067_blend[1]

Another great looking bit of fungus. The colors again are spiked because the image looks so nice when they are drawn out.

DSCF0070_fungus[1] If you clicked through, you probably noticed how sharp and detailed this image is. It’s pretty impressive. So here is an 800x800 crop from the middle … you will need to click on it to see it pixel for pixel … and no one can deny the inherent sharpness of this lens.

DSCF0070_crop[1]

I thought I’d revert back to Provia to improve the captures … I am not a big fan of black shadows. This was a good opportunity to show the difference with nothing else changed.

DSCF0072_film_simulation[1] You will definitely want to click through on that one …

And one last image … a tree with a small plant growing in its bark. Weird. The tree almost looks burnt and the background looks pretty smooth, despite being a tad busy …

DSCF0079_plant_on_tree[1] My verdict so far is that I am pleased with this copy of the F300EXR.

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