Feedback requested

[Merlin]

I'm thinking of submitting the attached photo to one of the aero sites (a.net, airplane-pictures, or jetphotos) but out of the last dozen photos I've submitted, all but 2 were rejected (was amusing how different sites rejected the same photo but for different reasons).

I'd appreciate it if you could critque the photo and suggest any further changes that might be needed.

I've already applied the following:
  - cropped it down to 1024*680;
  - arbitrary rotation (2 deg CW)
  - USM (120%);
  - reduced brightness and contrast by 5 points each

Thanks in advance.


[old post - attachment deleted by admin]

[casper]

To be honest it still looks like it needs a slight rotation.

[Dave]

Firstly I think the image needs CCW rotation as Casper mentioned above. The big white tanks in the background look like they're leaning to one side.

One thing the big websites will pick up on is the purple/blue hallow that runs from the nose and along the top of the aircraft. I'm not sure what created that, is it in the original shot?

As for sharpening, you could probably get away with adding another 200,0.3,0 USM

Good luck with the image,

Dave

[Merlin]

One thing the big websites will pick up on is the purple/blue hallow that runs from the nose and along the top of the aircraft. I'm not sure what created that, is it in the original shot?

Dave, I've gone back to the original and the halo effect appeats to be present there too. I was playing about with the exposure settings (was set 2 steps above the auto-selected value), could that have caused it? It doesn't seem to appear in any of the other photos I'd taken at the time.

[Dave]

Dave, I've gone back to the original and the halo effect appeats to be present there too. I was playing about with the exposure settings (was set 2 steps above the auto-selected value), could that have caused it? It doesn't seem to appear in any of the other photos I'd taken at the time.

It must be some of the settings in your camera then. Once you take the picture, the camera will applying sharpening etc to the photo unless you have the settings turned off which is recommended.

I believe Nikon has an inbody sharpening setting which is renoned for apply halo's to aircraft so that is possibly the problem. I'm not a Nikon man, but if you can figure how to turn off all the in-camera settings then you should be ok.

If you want you can send me the image and I'll have a play around with it and see what I can do.

Regards,

Dave

[Merlin]

New photo.

Submitted this to A.net but was rejected due to 'soft'.

I've since applied two passes of USM (500, 0.2, 2).

To be honest I'm not seeing much of a change.

Does it still look soft?

Link to pic">