Image problem
I’ll guess that I am going to be a lone voice and probably wasting my time, but I couldn’t let issue 97 pass without comment.
I’ve been a Nikon user for more years than I care to count and I buy Nikon because of quality – they produce absolutely fabulous pieces of kit to enable average photographers, like myself, get pin-sharp, in-focus images when that is what we aim for.
I see N-photo’s function in life as being a medium for bringing us excellent images that we might strive to produce. And you do this with some excellent ideas and tutorials. However I have noticed a worrying trend over the past few months of you showing some rubbish photographs whilst at the same time trying to inspire readers, but in my humble opinion you are failing…
Can I point out your article on page 86 ‘Get the balance right’. Is this image the best that George Cairns can do? There must be hundreds of other shots in his armoury to illustrate his point, but N-photo publishes one with out-of-focus tree branches obscuring the viaduct.
Ian Mulroy
George Cairns replies: It’s true that I take ‘bad’ shots, and deliberately so – that way I have something to fix! For example I’ll occasionally tilt the camera to create a wonky horizon which I can straighten later on in the process.
Regarding the out-offocus tree branches and the viaduct, on occasion I write focus merging tutorials (using layers and masks), so it’s handy to have photos with separate focus points to combine. I snapped two versions: one with the icy foreground berries in focus to evoke the cold winter season,
and another with the viaduct looking sharp and with the foreground branches just out of focus.
However, when it came to writing this Capture NX-D tutorial, I needed a shot with ‘incorrect’ white balance settings in different parts of the scene, to create a cool shot to warm up. The topic was more about the lighting than the focal points, so I went with the version that focused on the blue shadows and the warm sunlit viaduct.