Buffalo II

[Greg McCary]

I took this guys picture close to my mom's house. I finally got close enough to one. They are very shy. I done some work in PS on him too. What do you think?
Greg

[Loupey]

I saw your post over in Critique and I'm not sure they answered your question over there. But let me say that your doubt about your rig's performance cannot be justified by this one shot.

The reason why the buffalo is blurry is because your focus is about 2' behind the guy's butt. It is also over-saturated and over-exposed (possibly in your post processing). I don't know if it was intentional or not, but in an attempt to bring out the detail in the shadows, the mid-tones and highlights are all over exposed. In harsh lighting conditions like this, you've got to accept either dark shadows or over blown highlights (unless you balance it out with fill flash or reflectors). Trying to balance it out in PS almost always looks unnatural and grainy IMO.

I editted your image but I won't post it unless you give permission if you'd like to see what I'm talking about.

Thanks for posting here

[Greg McCary]

Feel free to post it. The f stop was low because I wanted to shot over 1/200. I didn't realize it would narrow the DOF that much. I may have saturated it to much as well. I am in a learning curve on PS, with a new book. "Photoshop Landscape techniques". I will try a few more shots before give up on the lens.
Greg

[Loupey]

Greg, you were using film and a polarizer right? What speed film was it? Unless you were using very slow film, your shutter speed at f/5.6 with full polarization should have been much higher. Thus the overexposed result.

You asked about not zooming all the way for quality purposes. My experience with medium telephoto zooms is that the manufacturer puts more emphasis on correction at the higher end because they know most shooters will use that the most. This is the case with my 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses. So go ahead and zoom to the max!

Good job not shooting wide open. You probably read that most lenses perform the best 1 to 2 stops down from wide open.

So here is my rendition. Took out a lot of your saturation and contrast. Used a lot more Shadow/Highlight tool than what I normal would do - but did that to emphasize the grass and the focus point in relation to the buffalo.


Does this help?

[Greg McCary]

400 speed film with polarizer. Maybe my light meter could be off. The lens does seem slow. And I have a problem getting the focus right. When I focus to infinity on my camera it's seems a touch off so I back off just a little. I wonder could my camera be off some, I think my eyes are ok. Your picture is a improvement. Thanks...
Greg