articles/Landscape/Kintyre-page2

Mulling Around Kintyre - part 2 of 1 2 3 4

by Paul Gallagher Published 01/04/2014

the sharpening zones. We have an automatic 12-image ring around to quickly explore settings. This immediately threw up a conundrum for we normally see little difference in D800 images between the various levels of sharpening but this time around we did. Eventually we started afresh and adjusted the settings starting with Radius at 0.6 pixels, Detail at 90, the Amount set to 60 and finally an adjustment of the Masking level (using the Alt button) until the water was protected from pre-sharpening and ending up at 50. This was then followed by a modest 30% opacity setting of the High Pass layer.

This combination created the best visual compromise of sharpened features with slightly enhanced edges (haloes!) at the sea/sky and land/sky junctions, as shown (at 200% as a screen grab). This was then followed by making a 20x16-inch print that was deemed acceptable. A frustrating thing about all this is that it might not work on the next image, making 20x16 test images is time consuming and costly and, finally, there is no way to show our readers exactly what we are talking about! Once again, though, the point that was hammered home was that the screen is a poor witness to how a print is going to look; you have to make prints eventually!

Geology for Newbies

Arran is often described as containing the geology of Scotland on one island. The view below is from Kintyre, close to Skipness looking at the length of the island. The complexity of the rocks is illustrated by the fact that the Dalradian rock (hatched line) was made over the South Pole, the Devonian (red) is deposited desert sand from around the equator, the New Red Sandstone (yellow) was created at 25° N and then the volcanic stuff followed much later as America moved away to open up the Atlantic. The range of timescales is breathtaking, many hundreds of millions of years for the sandstones to deposit but sometimes as little as five days for the volcanic dykes to intrude and fill. Between the other rocks and the volcanic stuff the dinosaurs were wandering about the planet.

• Mulling Around Kintyre page 1
  
• Mulling Around Kintyre page 2
  
• Mulling Around Kintyre page 3
  
• Mulling Around Kintyre page 4
  

There are 37 days to get ready for The Societies of Photographers Convention and Trade Show at The Novotel London West, Hammersmith ...
which starts on Wednesday 17th January 2024