Photoclubalpha

Today we got some beautiful hoar-frost in the morning ... so I quickly stuck the 400 mm telephoto lens on my brand-new A900 out the bedroom window before having a shower and getting dressed. An hour later, the magic was gone.








All images: Sony Alpha 900, Minolta AF Apo HS 400 mm 1:4.5 G, f/5.6, 1/640 s, ISO 200/24°, hand-held but propped up on window sill, raw files processed with ACR 5.2 (incl. capture sharpening and output sharpening; no sharpening applied in Photoshop).

-- Olaf

Hi Olaf,

I like the fragile, willowy appearance of the frosty curvelinear ends; looks like a natural chandelier of frail candles in daylight. I'm sure you're enjoying more of the frost details when you open the photo at other degrees of getting closer at full-size.

I hope I see some frost here also, rain just won't allow it for now.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

Excellent set, Olaf.
I really really like the 3rd. The foggy appearance is awesome. Wonderful.

Holy done thats some ICE... is that running off a roof or something? thats the kind that rips down telehone poles

Sonolta wrote:It was a record 25 BELOW ZERO here in Rockford last night!

It's had warmed up to -5 when I took these snaps about an hour ago..

-Sonolta

Sounds like you have a really bad case of Global Warming up there!

Dusty

And Yanks think Scotland is cold!

It's actually a warm, damp, rainy, muddy place. We panic if we get -5, puts the heating bills up!

David

I'ts sortof hard to come to grips with leafless trees covered in frost whilst sitting here typing at an ambient temp of 30 deg. C but it's nice too see anyway that something like that actually exists, thanks for the look Olaf.
Greg
btw congrats on the A900

So that's what -25 deg. F looks like, ye gads....with that much ice on such slender twigs in Don's photos, it's a wonder they don't snap off, they must be a lot stronger than they look...good shots as well.
Greg

Greg Beetham wrote:....with that much ice on such slender twigs in Don's photos, it's a wonder they don't snap off, they must be a lot stronger than they look...good shots as well.
Greg

That's what makes wood so great! Strong, yet flexible and forgiving, natural and renewable, abundant, I could go on but it's hard to type w/ a sleeping baby in my arms.

Dusty

Isn't this thread about the nice 'Hoar Frost' photos of Olaf in 'Give it your best shot' and not somebody else's who tries to own every thread!??
Why doesn't that 'someone' start his own threads to receive critics instead of barging into other people's kind threads and ruin them for them?

Yildiz

Initially I had the same reaction Yildiz, but in the end I caved because they both rendered something very interesting for me, each in their own way, about the current state of the weather in the Northern Hemisphere in two different continents, something I've never experienced...snow and ice....or Hoar-frost either, although I have seen the green grass here look sort-of white-ish on a very cold (for here) winter morning before sunrise.
Greg

ps I think I might have done the same thing...once...very naughty.

Sonolta wrote:I have already pointed out halos on all three images, bogus distracting bokeh on #1, and the ultra-low-contrast of #3

Give it a break, you all bashing all knowing all whatever all. Let people have fun with photography, calm down, breeze, count til 3, there are different tastes and better contrast doen't mean better picture. I think moody, cold, dump, dark winter scenes can be low contrast. But that's just me...

Well, my monitor is set at 1920x1200 @ 32bit colour and the GeForce graphics accelerator is set at 50% contrast and zero sharpening, and I can't see this halo in Olaf's images, what am I looking for?
Greg

I must admitt that the horizontals and vertical lines in the background's first are a little distracting. Halo's I can't discover but what I do see is artefacts around the branches caused by the workflow and resizing method (I assume). I do have a calibrated screen btw. In fact I recalibrated it just a couple a days ago.

Greg Beetham wrote:Well, my monitor is set at 1920 × 1200 @ 32 bit colour ...

So is mine.

Greg Beetham wrote:... I can't see this halo in Olaf's images, what am I looking for?

Don't look any further; there are no sharpening halos. The sharpening applied to the images is moderate, increasing visual acutance but without creating unwanted halos---just as it is supposed to be.

There are some minor JPEG halos from fairly strong JPEG compression---JPEG quality is 40/100 for the larch twigs (#1 & #2) and 50/100 for the remote foggy tree (#3). I don't like web images that take forever to download so I keep my web images small. Yet those halos are hardly visible unless you magnify the images ... which of course you aren't supposed to do. The JPEG quality is carefully selected to look good at the given size and bad on any sort of magnification.

Apart from JPEG compression, there are no halos and no undue artifacts.

-- Olaf