I like the scene and the comp but there are some features in the exposure/color balance I have questions about.
What is the contribution of the pixel shift feature for an image like this one? This isn't a technology I am familiar with so bear with me and give me a good swift kick if I am off base here.
There's an interesting feeling of depth in the green lowlands that seems to stick out compared to what I am used to seeing in digital photography. It almost feels more like film. There is a softness in the focus in the image that also sticks out to me. Most notable in the tips of the tree branches in the foreground. Lastly the sky in the upper left is incredibly bright. This almost has a feel of a tone mapped image from early HDR days.
Not sure Allan, still trying out the pixel shift function. This was the first time I really did much with it in a landscape type shot. Experimenting to see under what conditions it might be useful and what it's limitations are with respect to landscapes. Movement in the scene causes artifacts and I was looking at how that is going to limit it's functionality. The shots I took had little movement except for the water in the river and the clouds movement between shots. The cloud movement did leave artifacts when using Sony's software. Artifacts in the water weren't particularly noticeable because of the nature of the shot.
I can see the benefit to pixel shift in certain conditions and will play with it more in Death Valley next month. Among the purported benefits are less noise. There's not much in the way of noise using ISO 100, but the sky often has a little noise even then and sometimes in the dark shadows. Another benefit which may or may not help is an extra stop of dynamic range. About 16 stops with pixel shift and the a7r3. Also, because when combined, each pixel on the sensor receives red, green and blue wavelengths. Supposedly better color depth and no false color. All these factors added up should yield better detail. That doesn't really much matter with small web jpgs, but being able to crop in certain circumstances and also more detail for printing is a good thing!
As for this picture, the tiff generated by the Sony software was sharp. So much so that I didn't add any. It softened substantially in the transition to the unembedded profile web image. Colors look a bit different too when downloading the photo from the web and reopening in PS. As far as the brightness of the clouds in the upper left, the brightest point has an average RGB value of about 246 on my monitor?
Thanks for the comments and the questions too. Here is another rendition using a new beta software I found after I posted the original. I made mention of it in the Sony forum. It treated the clouds nicer and also produced a DNG instead of a tiff which could be edited in RAW software (I used Lightroom).
Jim
in the valley on Thursday. Pixel shift mode with Sony a7r3 and a canon 17mm TS-E.
