i took this shot of a grizzly bear in Alaska back in the 90’s with a Canon 35mm film camera and a 500mm telephoto. In the original capture, the nose of the bear wasn’t sharp, and that always bothered me. We can accept out of focus backgrounds, but when important elements in the foreground are blurred it’s visually annoying -- at least to me. I revisited the image and applied Topaz Sharpen AI just to the area of the nose, and that made a huge difference. Now it looks like I had enough depth of field with the long lens. I used Fujicrhome Provia 100 for this shot , and 100 ISO seems ridiculous today with modern mirrorless cameras capable of ISO settings never dreamed of in the past. Low ISO settings mean DOF is sacrificed and often the shutter speed is less than ideal as well. Post-processing software, though, can now breathe new life into older images.
2 Comments
May 8, 2022, 10:20:58 AM
Jim Zuckerman - You're very welcome, Frederic. Thank you for appreciating what I post. I'm glad you find them helpful.
May 8, 2022, 9:29:24 AM
Frederic Hore - Hi Jim, Many thanks for your tip about how selectively applying Topaz Sharpen AI improved the sharpness of your stunning grizlly bear photo. It's amazing what some of the image processing software can now do. I haven't bought this plugin yet, however I have been using Topaz DeNoise AI and had remarkable success cleaning up film grain from some aerial slide images photographed at sunrise in Australia in 2001. Thank you for your engrossing and always insightful posts! Cheers, Fredetic Hore, Montréal, QC