I haven’t been able to do any photography this past week. I changed cars a couple of weeks back and the transaction hasn’t exactly gone smoothly shall we say. But whilst I’ve been sorting out a few of the lose ends, I’ve also been processing my recent shots with the Panasonic G9, ready for stock submission.
Here’s an example of one that I like the look of but where I got the point of focus wrong. I seemed to keep doing this before I found I was causing the problem by catching the back of the camera screen and moving it.
I shot this with the Panasonic G9 and Leica 12-60 lens at 15mm. It was a handheld exposure of 1/640” at f/9.0 and ISO200. Despite the small aperture of f/9.0, there isn’t enough depth of field because the point of focus is wrong.
Here’s a section of the image at 100% magnification. You can see the foreground flowers are in sharp focus but then there isn’t enough depth of field to keep the rocks and sea in the background acceptably sharp. The focus point is just too close to the camera.
Now look at this same section after applying Topaz Sharpen AI. The rocks and sea have snapped into focus.
It’s very impressive what the Topaz software can achieve, and it’s saved quite a few shots I would otherwise have deleted. If you want to see another example, I recently published an article on my Lenscraft website (https://lenscraft.co.uk/photo-editing-tutorials/topaz-sharpen-ai/).
A final point to mention is that my newsletter is mailed overnight tonight. It includes a free prize draw to win a license for the new Nik Collection 4. Anyone subscribed to the newsletter can enter. If you haven’t subscribed already, you can use this link (https://lenscraft.co.uk/lenscraft-members-area/).
I hope you like the photo and have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Thanks for sharing. I finally invested in Topaz software (image quality package?) Mainly because of your examples… thanks, for that.
Best regards, Pablo
You’re welcome and I hope the Topaz software works out well for you. It’s been working very well on almost every image I’ve tried it with.
Hi Robin! You might remember, I was critical about the pricing model Topaz started to use sometime ago. Meanwhile, I changed my mind and have their yearly subscription.
Sharpen even saved one of my stitches, where one image from about 50 was blurred (movement). Splendid! The one thing which puzzles me is, that often I cannot predict results and have to try all three algorhythms, possibly with various values. But when it „hits“, it hits 🙂
I am eagerly awaiting till Corona allows us to travel, british coasts and other landscapes are an old wish of mine…
We are all entitled to change our minds. I wasn’t thrilled initially with the new license model but then realised how good the software is and how much we pay for annual releases from competitors. As you say, it can be difficult to predict which routine works best but one of them usually delivers. As you say, roll on the lifting of travel restrictions.