I took this while on a walk near my home on Sunday morning. My dog had gotten away from me and had just finished several rounds of “The Chasing Game” with a juvenile coyote. The coyote kept coming back for more, and would bark and howl to get attention.
I snapped this a couple of minutes later, and thought it was a fitting final shot for the Rebel XS. But coming back to it, the photo seemed too digital/clinical. Even after making some adjustments for “polarizer sky.” (I often use my “Moose’s Warm CPL” on sunny days, and most days are sunny here.)
I tried following some suggestions I found in one of Boris’ DarkTable videos (episode 78), and I think it looks a bit more like a film photo. The sky has a little banding*, but I’ve tried to minimize that. The main goal here was to soften the portrait a little without sacrificing sharpness. I also moved the sky color toward cyan to give it a “Color Kodak look” like I remember from the 70’s-90’s.
I’m looking for pointers/advice/comments, plus any edits you might care to make. Thank you!
Thanks for sharing. I will pass on this one as your edit is already really good, hard to improve that. I too am a sucker for cyan skies, it just looks right almost all the time
I like the sky color a lot, so instead of applying my usual presets, I just slapped the Fuji film sim Astia on.
Ran it through my usual dt-nind-denoise workflow. Although it’s not a high ISO file, I need it to be completely noise-free in orderto apply RL-deblur (10 iterations).
I’m taking delivery of a used Panasonic Lumix G9 tomorrow. New lenses will be 1) 12-35 mm f/2.8 Gen II, 2) 35-100 mm f/2.8 Gen II, and 3) 25 mm f/1.7 prime. All Lumix/Panasonic. I’m keeping my old Canon lenses, and will try manual focus/wide aperature with an adapter. The 55-255 mm f/4-5.6 will have some good reach, but might be a bit slow.
I read through your thread last night. I’m not quite adventurous enough at the moment to try it out; I need to learn the basics first. Thanks for a great edit.
Congratulations! I too have the G9 also the 12-35mm.
Additionally, I have the “Leica” Elmarit 45mm Macro and a m4/3 6mm-to-something cine zoom lens. Of course, a M42 to m4/3 adapter for my screw-mount lenses …
The module dither and posterize with the “random” preset (-80dB) can help reducing banding in color gradients. Also I like to add a lot of noise, and it also reduces banding.
I was mainly working on the colors of the dog’s face, and the contrast on his back/rear. I also gave attention to the rock he is standing on and the hue of the sky. When I got all of that the ways I liked, I stopped.
