[Dean]

    I was surprised that this image didn’t do as well as I had hoped at a club competition. Your views?

[EdMak]

Dean as you well know, A Judge or whoever comments, is just giving their opinion. Personally impressed with this pic. What were the comments, and, what was your opinion of the winning print. Cheers. Ed.

[Jocko]

Maybe just needed a bit more bite.
   

[MrB]

It is a pleasing composition but the image looks very grainy/noisy for a Canon 60D at ISO 400. Is the original full-size photo like that, i.e. before re-sizing for the forum? Is it an effect that has been added? Whatever the reason, it is spoiling the image for me - it seems to interfere with the appearance of the fine detail of the image shown here, and I would have expected good clarity in this type of photo.

Cheers.
Philip

[Dean]

   
It was displayed as a print. I agree with you, Jocko, that more contrast is better. The original image was very much like the final print, although it had to be stretched a fair bit to straighten the adjacent buildings. I hadn’t got a tripod with me so had to raise the ISO to get a reasonable shutter speed. I used a PS plugin, Nik colour efex to bring out the detail. This is the original image converted straight to jpeg.
Thanks for the comments.
Dean

[EnglishBob]

For my eye, the original image lacks a little contrast, there doesn't seem to be any true blacks in it. As previously noted it is very noisy as well. I like the straightened buildings better and love the composition.

[Jocko]

Dean. Do you shoot in raw? If not you really should. I resisted using raw for years, but about a year and a half ago I moved over to using raw and I have never looked back. You can do so much more with an image if it is captured in raw. I keep all my raw originals and regularly revisit them as my expertise and software improves.
With such a wide angle lens I would have used 1/100 sec which would have allowed ISO 100. However, even at ISO 400, using raw you would have been able to manipulate the image far more without adding so much noise.

[Jocko]

A trick I use to avoid converging verticals, when practical, is to frame the original with the camera horizontal.
   
I then trim off the wasted space in the foreground. No convergence.
   

[MrB]

With such a wide angle lens I would have used 1/100 sec which would have allowed ISO 100.

I agree with Jocko - that is a possible way of keeping the ISO low, and thereby reducing noise.

Another would have been to use aperture f/8 - that would have given over two stops extra exposure, again enabling ISO 100. f/8 is often one of the apertures within the range of the 'sweet spot' of many lenses - i.e. potentially its maximum sharpness.

Using f/8 with a 10 mm lens on an APS-C camera could have everything from about half a metre to infinity within the depth of field. Anyone who has a smart phone - it is useful to install one of the free apps for calculating depth of field. e.g. Hyperfocal Pro is very good.

Cheers.
Philip

[EdMak]

Dean, is there any chance an Effect, or something similar, was set on the camera. This image was opened in Camera Raw, (I do not shoot RAW), and, Auto settings only used. I would have expected better. Look at Rolf's Squirrels, that was mainly Auto, in RAW. I did nothing else to your pic. Puzzled. Ed.