Whale diving

[Benny Pan]

I threw up three times within 2 hours to get this shot. But it's worth it. I put a lot of time holding onto my heavy Sigma 50-150mm F2.8 lens against the heavy shaking out there on the deep sea.

Since 150mm is never long enough i did crop the photo and sharpened it. That's pretty much all I did.

Is the sharpening too much so it becomes grainy? how's the overall composition. But on the ferry you can't really decide which angle to shoot from and we were not allowed to get closer than 300m from the whale by NZ laws.

Thank you all

[Ohjin]

Wow Whale tail

[n8]

To answer your question, yes, sharpening will increase the grain. Depending on your editing software though, you should be able mask out what you don't need sharpened...like the sky.

[armando_m]

good thing you did see whales !!!

nice shot, I think the sharpening amount is fine.

[llewpics]

I'll keep this one short ...I think the horizon is a little off, falling to the right. There is, in my opinion, a little too much grain in the sky - perhaps try sharpening the water area only (selective)? Otherwise, it's a nice shot ...and sorry for the experience :0)

[Benny Pan]

Thank you guys. Yeah I should use brush to sharpen wherever needed. Good tips thank you

[arne saknussen]

You captured a great moment.

[LeeIs]

I like the simplicity of this. The sharpness looks fine on my screen. i wish the sky was more dramatic with some cloud action, but u can't do anything about that right now. unless u combine two shots.

[suncity1205]

The most important is that you did it.............

[GB1]

Glad you caught this even if you got sick (Dramamine works wonders for me btw). Is it too sharpened? I would say yes, but just barely.. can you back off a little? If it really requires this much sharpening, I would run it though a grain-reduction app to reduce that in the sky. I like this much sky btw: it adds an enormousness to the photo.

G

[Benny Pan]

Deos this make a difference? I unsharpen everything to original and just brush the tail sharp. But still looks like grainy on the sky

[jetrim]

If shot in RAW you can use Adobe Camera Raw to sharpen with the masking slider (hold down the ALT key to see exactly what gets sharpened. If shot in JPG you can use the majic wand to select only the sky and use "median filter" to reduce the grain. I would also rotate the image about 1 degree counter clockwise to level up the horizon.

BTW: This looks awesome in black & white too: