The Giant's Head

amcinroy

Here's a couple of images from last night.

This is a good demonstration of how quickly the light can change and how it can transform a scene in the space of just 4 minutes. Both of these are fair representations of what I saw. The third image is the sunset that was creating this magical glow.

Dodgykeeper

They are amazing Andy,

Freddie59

They are some shots. Truly amazing.

MataЯ

Very nice.

What lens were you using?

amcinroy

Thanks folks,

These were shot with my Pentax 14mm DA Prime.

It tends to get locked on to my camera and I have a hard job getting it off. At 20mm equivalent in old money it's as wide as I'd want to go. It's also very resistant to flare shooting into the sun.

kgiller

Great shots. Really like #2 and #3 with those colours. Can i ask what kind of shutter speed was on #3?

mehfesto2

#2 is amazing. The little light creeping over the rock is fantastic and the glow on the 'head itself is brilliant, lovely reflections too.

What shutter speed did you use out of curiosity?

kgiller

mehfesto2 wrote: »

#2 is amazing. The little light creeping over the rock is fantastic and the glow on the 'head itself is brilliant, lovely reflections too.

What shutter speed did you use out of curiosity?

LOL, stop copying me :rolleyes:

Dades

Lovely stuff.

#2 works really well having seen #1, and #3 is special in it's own right.

amcinroy

Here's a bit of info about shutter speeds.

The third shot is unfiltered at 1/4 second @ F8
Depth of field was not an issue here so I selected a mid aperture for optimium sharpness.

The second shot is a bit different
I used a 3 stop straight neutral density filter and an aperture of F22 to slow the shutter speed down to 30 seconds. I did this for two reasons. Firstly to improve the quality of the reflection of the Giant's Head. Secondly, to make the strong lines of the foreground and headland stand out sharply. Sometimes all the detail of wave motion in short exposures of calm sea water can be messy and distracting. However, in a real storm where the sea is the subject I would normally select a faster shutter.

mehfesto2

kgiller wrote: »

LOL, stop copying me :rolleyes:

Hah. Sorry, didn't even cop!

Dragan

No 2 is gorgeous, No.3 is something else entirely.

AnCatDubh

i'm with the bunch on this - #2 is my pick - lovely stuff. Hmnnn.... Pentax 14mm prime - very nice indeed (ok - now you've put a longing on me!)

To add something for your consideration - your description is interesting #1 being a short exposure and #2 with ND at 30 seconds being relatively long. As you examine the two images really closely #2 has the positives of the wonderful colour and lighting at specific parts of the image (very algarve-evening like ). But #2 also has a (far) darker sky as i view it - perhaps the ND / longer exposure. To be nit picky (although #2 is still wonderful), you could take the sky from one and blend it into two... The same has happened the sea (again #2 is still wonderful) but i think it might have lost something in the longer exposure - although gained something in the reflection and smoothness. You get the rock brighter too in #2 which is really interesting in terms of the reaction of the camera to light and darkness with longer exposures - thanks for sharing.

This is all very nit picky so ignoring the post is an option too

amcinroy

Thanks AnCat, I never ignore a post.

Thanks for those suggestions. I can see where you are coming from and might have a bit more of a play. I think I can probably lift the darker sections using masked curves from this one exposure instead of blending. I'm not a big fan of blending, particularly when the times of exposure are well separated (almost getting into the dangerous realms of composites).

Interesting to hear your comments, cheers.

Andy

conkeroo

Beautiful shots. Amazing what a couple of minutes in the same spot can do. Though numbers 1 and 2 have different lighting, I like them both. They both have a different uniqueness.

Balfey1972

Smashing photos Andy. You could spend you life along that coast taking photos and you would never run out of options.