Last week I was in the Lake District followed by France. That seems so long ago now that I thought I would share one of the images. This one was captured on the Olympus EM5 and is three shots merged in Lightroom. The light on the day was quite blue and the hills were a very vivid green so this image is pretty true to life. I did do a little post processing in Alien Skin Exposure X, applying the Agfachrome 1000 RS slide film simulation. If you think you can see noise in the sky, it’s actually the grain simulation.
Have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Nice refreshing atmospheric picture. What is of interest to me regarding this image is the comment about the “grain simulation” in the sky. This relates to the other comment about using a film simulation as an effect. I don’t see this as good or bad, but actually more of a statement of our times and, especially, of our “digital times”. Back in the “film times”, the grain in the sky would have been normal and expected, but today this may have been criticized as “noise”, so you were forced to explain this detail in your post. Without that explanation viewers may have wondered what was happening to the EM5’s resolution or some other problem. How would you have felt by not stating any “effects”, regarding the image, and just let it stand for its intrinsic qualities? As you have stated in the past, you are still a film lover and continue to use Medium Format and your X-Pan cameras. Without stating anything about the image would your viewers have supposed this was actually a film image (as it does look a little like an X-Pan) or just wondered about the grain in the sky. Sometimes a game like this can stimulate your viewers into thinking more about film or what grain or other effects adds or detracts in a good or bad picture. I usually prefer to know the details of how an image was taken, but perhaps a little mystery would have been a better option!
Thanks John. Some valuable feedback as always. I actually decided to mention it with tis image as I broke one of my own rules and added the grain effect before downsampling the image. When I downsized it’s emphasised the grain a little too much and it does look a little like noise. The film effect in Exposure X is actually quite good although as you say, I do love my film. I will see what I can do about creating some mystery next week. I might even reveal my next camera that I just ordered.
The compelling feature of this photo is light on the landscape, and you rendered it gorgeously.
As for the sky, it does look noisy, as the grain tracks with low luminosity and contains chroma artifacts, as digital noise does. I am surprised that Alien Skin introduced so much faux chroma, but I’ve never shot high speed slide film, so I do not know what its grain characteristics are. ( I guess the real question is why choose 1000RS, as one would never use that film to take this picture.) In any case, the grain would not draw the attention of most viewers, just photographers. (As Jeff Schewe once said, the only person who views a print from less than a couple of feet away is another photographer!)
Just a side note – one of the annoying trends in landscape photography of late is the insistence on “dramatic skies.” (The other egregious one is the gratuitous placement of some stump, rock or ruin in the front of the picture to create “foreground” interest.) In this case, though, the broken sky is the source of the light, and the photo makes sense. I love the texture and the great diagonal composition. Well done.
Thanks Guy, I’m pleased that you like it. To answer a couple of the points you raised. I selected the Agfachrome for no other reaso than I liked it. I could have removed the grain effect or reduced it but it looked good. It was only once I had downsampled and posted the image that I decided the effect was too strong. You live and learn. As for the comment on the sky or some other contrived/forced composition, I do agree. In this instance the sky was darkened in camera by adding a 1 stop ND Grad. I only did this in order to open the shadows a little more. Thanks for adding your thoughts.
Robin, you mentioned, in the photo caption, that the three images were stitched (which, to my mind, means that you shot them in left-to-right–or r-t-l sequence), but in the text, that they were merged (which I’d take to mean incorporated into an HDR-type program). I was, until now, not aware that Lightroom was capable of either; I’ve been doing the former with Photoshop and the latter with either Photomatix or Nik. Can you please clarify–and include how to do it in LR?
The more recent versions of Lightroom (I think it started with Version 6) have a Merge option where you select multiple images, right click and then select “Merge to” from the menu. The options hee are then Panorama or HDR. This one is the Panorama merge. Here is a link to a short video I posted on my Lenscraft website demonstrating this. https://lenscraft.co.uk/lightroom-6-photo-merge-panorama/