Photography Travelogues – The Great Barrier Reef 2/2
November 9, 2011 8 Comments
Whitehaven, Whitsunday Island, Great Barrier Reef
They say Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island has the whitest sand in the world, although on my last trip some of the broad silica beach had been washed away by a tropical storm. Still, it looked pretty good to me and the northern end of the beach which ends at Hill Inlet appeared as it always does, an amazing pattern of water channels cut into the hard sands below.
Walking along Whitehaven Beach at the opening to Hill Inlet is a wonderful experience. The shallow waters are home to small rays which you’ll see scurrying across the sandy bottom as they feed, but despite the wonderful warm water and sheltered location, you don’t really get a sense of how beautiful Hill Inlet is without a higher vantage point.
There is a lookout on the headland behind the Inlet which offers the classical tourist viewpoint (shown here). A popular technique is to take a series of images and stitch them together for an impressive panorama. You can see the different colours of blue and aquamarine in the water, indicating different depths. At low tide, the lighter areas become exposed sand bars.
However, it’s not until you take to the air that you get to see how magnificent Hill Inlet really is. Helicopters can be hired from nearby Hamilton Island, but there are some height restrictions for flying as Whitsunday Island is a National Park. However, this simply means using a slightly longer focal length for tighter angles.
An obvious trick for getting good photographs from the air is to ask the pilot to take the door off so you’re not shooting through glass or Perspex. Next, you need to be sure your shutter speeds are high to avoid camera shake as helicopters are great sources of vibration. Some experts suggest a shutter speed of at least 1/500 second, but this depends on a number of factors and I generally prefer shutter speeds shorter than 1/1000 second. On this particular shoot, there was a strong wind blowing which came straight through the cabin, so even at 1/2000 second I found hints of camera shake in my files. Of course, this could also be because I was shooting with the new IQ180 and 80-megapixels will quickly reveal any shortcomings in technique!
I used the new Schneider Kreuznach 55mm leaf shutter lens. Although it has an f2.8 maximum aperture, my lens performs best between f5.6 and f8. And although the IQ180 has a native sensitivity of ISO 35, I would need a faster setting than this to keep my shutter speeds up. Some compromises were required! I settled on an aperture of f4 and ISO 200 which gave me shutter speeds between 1/800 and 1/3200 seconds, depending on what I was shooting.
While the overview is a crowd pleaser, my favourite shots of Hill Inlet are of the sand patterns just below the water surface. I will ask the pilot to fly up and down the inlet a couple of times, pointing my lens directly down. Every year the sand has moved, creating wonderful new shapes and lines.
The original file was taken when the sun was behind cloud. Sometimes this is better than full sunshine as it can reduce the reflections off the water, although depending on the time of day and the position of the sun, a polarising filter can be useful for this as well. However, a polarising filter reduces the light reaching the sensor and you lose a shutter speed or so.
Even starting with a flat file, there are lots of potential. The screen grab above shows Capture One open with the original file in the preview window. There isn’t a lot of colour, nor a lot of contrast, but the basic pattern and composition is pleasing to my eye.
Down the side of the Capture One screen, the thumbnails show several variations (using Capture One’s variants), and all of them have used increased contrast to bring out the sand patterns more strongly.
One of the tools I like to use for low contrast subject is the Levels tool under the Exposure tab. By grabbing the black and white point sliders and dragging them into the edge of the histogram, the image comes alive. Then it’s just a matter of fine tuning the exposure with the grey or gamma slider in the middle.
For the final edit, I refined my white balance, increased the colour saturation and used a local adjustment to lighten the top of the image.
If you’re interested in the photography workshops I present on Hamilton Island, or you just want an excuse to visit Australia’s tropical north, please visit www.hamiltonisland.com.au for more details, or visit my site at www.betterphotography.com. It’s a great excuse for a week on Hamilton Island!
Hi Peter,
Thanks for letting me share the adventure.
The photo of the sandbanks and the cutting channel is beautiful – though I wonder why you show the world’s whitest sand in grey tones generally well below “detailed white”. Are you implying a water-surface? Then – I still have no feeling of water above.
Some areas of the sandbanks in the lower part of the image seem to suffer from colour noise. I think you are squeezing the jpegs beyond what is pleasant to look at here. It’s a pity.
On my screen!.. the Hillinlet02 is considerably warmer than -01 and is generally showing the sand somewhat yellowish. Maybe the sun was at a lower point? Playing with different neutral points creates a number of interesting colour palettes. It IS difficult to choose, but why not choose “white sand”?
The details are impressing. Happily the human body is an effective buffer between the aircraft and the camera, if only one’s arms were strong enough! What is the weight of the IQ180 system with a 55 mm Schneider Kreuznach lens?
Hi Eigil
Isn’t photography a wonderful thing in that we can all like something different. I could choose to make the sand pure white, but too white and I found I lost the detail in the sand patterns. As for the colour balance, I chose something that was pleasant to my Australian eyes and I acknowledge that different people and cultures have different colours and tones that they respond to.
As for the image suffering from colour noise, you should take a look at some of my files after I have finished corrupting them in Photoshop! I find that photographers are very critical of the technical side – and I am one of those photographers – but sometimes this needs to be put aside so we can focus on the aesthetics. On this occasion, maybe you and I will have to agree to disagree as to how far I pushed the file!
Cheers,
Peter
Peter
Photography is a wonderful activity, for sure!
But, if the discussion of perceived image quality should be limited to matters of taste or cultural preferences, we might as well disregard the influence of the photographer, good lenses, cameras, raw-converters, workflows, etc. And that would make no sense, considering the title of this blog.
Jpeg-compression. All serious photographers suffer each time healthy digital images are more or less spoiled, because they must load fast or abide to restrictive storage limits. I don’t know if a high degree of compression is prescribed with the underlying WordPress system here. If so, why at all show the bigger versions. In my opinion the goal is forfeited, if the price is a visible reduction of image quality
As you wrote so inspiring about the IQ180 system and the 55 mm Schneider Kreuznach lens, I asked myself: What would it feel like to sit in an aircraft with the system in your hands? So I asked you about the weight of the combination?
Hi Eigil
I think you and I have discovered a gap in the Phase One specifications! I can see the 645DF weighs 1030 g without batteries, the 55mm weighs 660 g, but I can’t see the weight of the IQ180! We might have to defer this question to the Phase One white coats! What does the package weigh?
Concerning JPEG compression, I agree that WordPress probably uses less than perfect algorithms for rendering if our purpose is to look at the absolute quality of a file. However, the main reason for providing larger versions of the photos is so viewers can see them better and, when there are screen shots, read the words.
Cheers,
Peter
An IQ180 also weighs 1030g without batteries, so the total weight of the system (minus batteries) adds up to 2720 g
All the best,
Niels
Thank you, both.
If it’s still 6 AA batteries in the grip, and 1 lithium battery in the back (per 4th hour), we are close to a hand-held weight round 3 kg, which is not “unbearable” considering the potential of the system.
Still, Peter, this blog is about image quality, and you are stressing image details. The small tops of the distant waves in one of your shots are actually recorded as fine filigree. Only it is almost invisible with the current jpg compression. I hope the professor and you will consider the advantage of showing images optimized for the large page format regarding compression and sharpness, as I think most of your readers here are examining the larger format as examples of quality. This doesn’t mean that the images need to be uncompressed. You know of course, that the file size can be reduced considerable before the visual image quality suffers. As images are often of secondary significance, blog systems go to the limit in compressing. Images on this blog should not loose integrity from secondary techniques. If you are reluctant to spread full detailed copies, then – all we can do is to claim the ownership and mark our images. Almost perfect images are stolen too. It’s a condition on the Internet.
Thanks for the answers.
I respect all the effort to take this picture however after looking at it on my cellphone initially I thought it was a mammogram. I do appreciate. the chalenges of taking pictures from airplanes and worst yet heelicopters. You should try an ultralite or towed glider to reduce vibration. Handheld in a hellicopter is no better than sitting on a shake table. That is why they invented the. stabalized
I respect all the effort to take this picture however after looking at it on my cellphone initially I thought it was a mammogram. I do appreciate. the chalenges of taking pictures from airplanes and worst yet heelicopters. You should try an ultralite or towed glider to reduce vibration. Handheld in a hellicopter is no better than sitting on a shake table. That is why they invented the stabalized mount. the. stabalized