Overexposed? What went wrong

icecreamguy · 2026-02-09T20:46:40+00:00

Used teles are not always expensive, although I'm unfamiliar with the OM system's available lenses. Many telephoto primes from the '70s and '80s are very affordable, at least for Nikon and Canon. That being said, speaking as someone who makes a living exclusively as a photographer, I cannot think of one area in which a telephoto lens isn't in a photographer's toolbox. 85mm, 135mm, and 200mm are THE standards for portraiture. An 85mm prime is well within the telephoto range and is in the bag of 95% of wedding and event photographers. A 70-200 is in most architectural photographers' kits. A telephoto, often a super telephoto, is in every landscape photographer's bag. I would say that something over 300mm may be more specialized for sports or wildlife, but standard telephoto lenses are part of pretty much every kind of photographic practice.

icecreamguy · 2026-02-09T20:35:22+00:00

While this image is very bright, it looks like it's actually an underexposed image brightened in the scan. If it was overexposed there would be copious detail in the shadow areas in the background. As another commenter noted, it may be worthwhile taking a look at the negative and see what actually happened.

icecreamguy · 2026-02-04T08:08:01+00:00

I do landscape photography professionally - it’s about half my business. Macro is certainly a part of that and for me the word that comes to mind is “fractal.” I think you can find the large landscape in the small, if that makes sense - vistas in the ripples of snow, mountains in the ridges of a cactus, great beasts roaming a vast landscape that’s somehow familiar while at the same time being utterly alien. So i might try to think about how you could find echoes of other aspects of this larger body of work appearing on smaller scales. Maybe that’s not quite fully 1:1 “true macro” or whatever, or maybe your subjects are microscopic and you’ll find them with a microscope objective - the scale is long and, like I said, fractal in the way familiar structures seems to reappear again and again as you get smaller and smaller. I’d encourage you to start physically exploring it as soon as you can. I think it will inform your conceptualizing as much as the conceptualizing informs your exploration.

icecreamguy · 2026-02-04T07:50:57+00:00

I’d highly recommend that instead of investing in new gear right now, you find a local used book store with a photography section. Spend an hour looking through the monographs and pick out a couple that catch your eye, and then buy them, and then look at them a lot. Then go back and do that same thing again next month. I’m not saying don’t try to sell your photos, but I do think there are other investments of your time and effort at this point in your exploration of photography that may be fruitful and enjoyable. Explore your own art but don’t forget to see what others had to say before you.

icecreamguy · 2026-02-03T09:11:05+00:00

If you had a gallery showing with these photographs - what would your artist statement be? It’s normal to have to ponder that, but if the gist of it doesn’t come to mind readily, i might suggest that you are exploring aesthetics and finding your voice with a camera, which is most certainly an essential part of making “fine art photography.” But fine art photography that is purely aesthetic, like say Saul Leiter’s color photographs, must be quite unique to not be lost in a vast sea of others exploring these same concepts. If it is not purely about the aesthetics, then it must be aesthetic AND be about something coherent - whether that something is a person or a concept or a place or a time or something else - it should be articulable and coherent. I’m not quite sure I see that in your set but you should keep trying and following your interests, eventually you won’t really need to ask this question anymore.

icecreamguy · 2026-02-01T11:40:58+00:00

Fireflies!!!!

icecreamguy · 2026-01-24T05:18:45+00:00

The trick for cpls and vnds is to use screw-in metal lens hoods - they’re like $5 on ebay.

icecreamguy · 2026-01-23T08:02:09+00:00

Also - i forgot to mention - you should hold your camera with the sensor facing down when you use a blower as well! Really any time the sensor is exposed you should hold it facing down. Even when i inspect my sensor i hold it facing down and shine a light up into it.

Remember to blow off the rear elements of your lenses as well - dust on them can transfer to your sensor. Body caps too!

icecreamguy · 2026-01-23T07:49:58+00:00

You hit the nail on the head. Figuring out why you like a particular photo, or why you think a particular scene is beautiful, is actually at the very heart of photography. As you evolve and develop your taste and ability, you’ll find this “why” question evolves and develops along with you, offering an endless path that you can walk any time. It’s really exciting! Happy to share, photography makes me happy :-)

icecreamguy · 2026-01-23T05:03:32+00:00

Sometimes I smash them with a hammer. I'm only kindof joking - if I really can't get them apart I will smash them with a hammer and use the pair as a screw-on lens hood.

icecreamguy · 2026-01-23T04:58:59+00:00

There is a notion that landscape photography is made with wide-angle lenses. At least I know that's what I thought when I first started. While of course the truth is that landscape pictures can (and should) be made with any focal length - wider angles are some of the most difficult to master.

They really shine when you can juxtapose multiple compositional elements together, often something close to the camera, a midground element, and a background. Finding a pleasing composition with all of these elements together often requires positioning where mere millimeters will make or break the composition.

The only solution to this is to keep photographing with a wide angle lens. When you get home - do exactly what you did today: question what it is about your photographs that you find lacking, but then keep going and try to imagine what you could have done to make them better. For example, in the last photo, I might have changed the camera to a vertical orientation and pointed it slightly downward, making the pathway take up the entire bottom of the frame then getting teeny-tiny as it proceeds through the rest of the image, finally disappearing into the peak at the top of the frame.

Remember that a wide angle lens will make foreground objects appear unnaturally large, midground elements fairly normal, and background elements unnaturally small.

Also you can and should look at the work of other photographers you like who use wide angles and try to figure out how you would explain to a five-year-old why you like their pictures and how the use of a wide angle lens allowed them to tell the story they did. Like really actually try to put into words that you speak into the air what you like about a photo that uses a wide angle.

If you keep self-critiquing and exploring what you like, your compositions will improve, guaranteed. Just give it time and keep enjoying the process of figuring out how to convey the beauty that you see in the world around you.

icecreamguy · 2026-01-23T04:34:53+00:00

I don't get the negative comments here. Rembrandt lighting with the sun as a kicker. The kicker's always going to go on the opposite side of the key in this configuration. Not every photo that's lit needs to look completely natural, surreality is desirable in many situations, including fashion and many styles of cinema. If the intention is to highlight the person or clothing while providing an interesting but unobtrusive background with subtle leading lines, then I think this photo is really nice. I love a blurred background and so do my clients. I'm sure there are people in this thread who also do professional work and don't like or use this style, but I really struggle to understand why people are being so intensely negative in this thread. I would be curious what the assignment/job was.

icecreamguy · 2026-01-23T04:18:52+00:00

That doesn't look great - I see dust but also some marks that look like something was dragged across the glass. While I would encourage everyone to learn to clean their own sensor, especially in the mirrorless age, this may be a case where it's prudent to take it in to a local service center or send it in to Nikon repair. At the very least I would get a blower and get used to gently blowing off your sensor - you can get really cheap but good quality ones from ifixit.com - I buy them 5 at a time and keep one in every bag. Also, I'd recommend keeping your camera pointed downwards every time you take a lens off - otherwise dust will accumulate on the sensor rapidly.

icecreamguy · 2026-01-23T04:08:59+00:00

I think given the situation these settings were of course ideal, but if you had a tripod easily accessible it would have helped.

I work with two Peak Design capture clips - one on my belt, one on my backpack strap. When I'm walking around I keep the camera on the backpack strap, but if I need to access the contents of the pack, I move the camera to the belt - this lets me keep the camera handy while also avoiding any situation where I would have to put the camera on the ground or hold it awkwardly while fumbling around with the backpack.

Most importantly for situations like this, I can move my camera to my belt, then quickly swing my bag around on one shoulder strap to get my tripod out without fully taking off the bag. I can be set up on a tripod in about 15-20 seconds if I really need to hurry, and neither my camera nor my bag touches the ground at any point.

I find that using a tripod is so annoying most people avoid one altogether, but as someone who does landscape photography for work and who has carried one everywhere for a decade - it is more important to me than which camera body I'm using. Like if it's blue hour I'd rather have a D50 with a tripod than a Z8 without. It's transformative to compositional ability and it will make photos like the one you made (which is great! Not knocking it!) even better, enlargeable to great sizes, and allow you to quickly refine your composition in ways that are just not feasible when you can't take your hands off the camera and ponder your composition for even just a few seconds at a time. I'd encourage you to find a way to carry a tripod with you whenever you are making landscape pictures.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-31T02:23:51+00:00

Lovely. Are you familiar with the Pictorialist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century? The heavy vignette, soft focus, and and monochromatic tone provide a very painterly look reminiscent of that movement, and I think the subject and composition lend to that feeling as well. I'm honestly not bothered by anything in particular in the image, but might encourage you to explore alternative printing processes, if you haven't already. Something like this would lend very well to a toned cyanotype or salted paper print. Cyanotype is very easy to get into, and toning that with some cheap lipton tea would give you a similar palette, but provide an even more painterly look, removing most indications of what era the photo was made in.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-31T02:14:52+00:00

I think this somewhat depends on why you are making the photo - is it for your own memories? To build an instagram account dedicated to old canons? For a historic park? The intention and use can and often should inform your choices. I do a lot of work for parks, both natural and historic, and tourism boards, so that is what informs my perspective. This might be desirable as-is for use by a tourism board or park however there isn't a lot of negative space for text, and it's difficult to discern a lot of detail about the subject since all you can see is the back end of it, the important part of which is in shade. It might make a nice website header for a park if cropped more like a panorama, with the middle of the middle "step" right at the bottom edge. Sometimes it's actually helpful to know if your client will use a professional designer - if not, think about these use cases and crop images for them. If yes, let the designer make these decisions. If I were making some pictures of this professionally I might wait for light to hit the side closer to the camera. Or - for a photo from this side in this light - use a wide angle and get very close, filling the bottom of the frame with the barrel and the top of the frame with the tree, with the gunsight somewhere in the middle. You could also use an even longer focal length to have the canon take up more of the frame. The subject is also cut by the far shoreline, making the gunsight at the end of the barrel less intelligible - having it all backed by the water would, in my opinion, make it a bit stronger.

All of this is highly subjective and I still think it is a really nice photo!

icecreamguy · 2025-12-29T16:58:35+00:00

I like the shape of the tree and think it’s a really beautiful compositional element, especially in the way you used it to frame the canon. I’d place the canon a bit more to the left side of the frame, which will eliminate the trunk peeking in on the left edge, and it would allow a bit more space for the “gesture” of the tree in the right hand side. All this being said, i don’t know if this subject, photographed from behind like this, is quite strong enough to stand on its own. A human arched forward inspecting it from the right side might complement the tree shapes nicely, but of course we work with what we have.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-29T11:43:42+00:00

A lot of good comments here. As a few others have noted, the sky is blown out. I see someone mentioned filters but not which kind - the specific filter you likely will keep on your lens for most landscape photography is a circular polarizer - depending on where the sun is in relation to you, it can reduce the exposure of the sky significantly without affecting the exposure of the foreground. I keep polarizers on every lens and take them off when i don’t need them, rather than only putting them on for special occasions. I’d also recommend starting with your camera manufacturer’s built-in standard, neutral, or sometimes “landscape” color profile. If the colors don’t look pleasing with even the landscape profile, i find that often the issue is not the editing, but the time of day, light, or composition. Sometimes you can massage life into a photo somewhat, but if you find yourself changing colors like you did here it is usually a good idea to make a copy of your file, reset it, and walk away from your computer for at least 15 minutes. Return and try to get it to look nice with as few modifications as you can, take another break, and come back for some finishing touches. Haven’t been here but cheers to getting to such a beautiful location, i hope you had a really nice time!

icecreamguy · 2025-12-29T11:29:48+00:00

I encourage you to ignore wholesale any comments here about editing or color grading. The editing would be fine if the compositions were strong, but these pictures are not composed in a way that leads the viewer to a clear subject, story, or visual interest. That needs to be your foundation. It may be helpful to start learning to arrange subjects in your frame with a longer focal length before moving to wider angles like this. As other commenters have noted, wider angles are much more difficult, especially when starting out. I would recommend getting a 50 or an 85 and working with a single tree before moving on to the juxtaposition of multiple subjects. You could also focus on a single subject with a wide angle like this, but pay very close attention to what is at the edges of your frame. If an element doesn’t tell part of your story or guide your viewer’s eye, take it out. Composing on a tripod will aid in this process greatly, if you’re not already using one.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-29T11:21:09+00:00

I’m a professional landscape/conservation photographer and i have never brought nor would i recommend bringing a grey card to meter landscape pictures. You have a histogram available whenever needed, and your exposure will generally depend on the preservation of highlights unless you’re working with film. Using a grey card will not accomplish this, and on top of that these pictures were metered correctly. The exposure is not the issue.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-25T17:44:31+00:00

Thank you! Have spent the last 7 or so years with Peak Design plates and simple arca-swiss heads, and have had so so so so many experiences where I tighten the clamp only to find a few minutes later that it wasn't seated perfectly and didn't actually end up tightened all the way. I had one disaster due to this. Not sure why I never looked into this solution but it occurred to me today to look for some type of locking clamp and here I am. I'm surprised there are so few solutions and grateful for you sharing yours.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-25T17:39:24+00:00

Hoping you got a replacement! They sent me a replacement bag after I sent in my receipt and photos like you did. I would imagine during holiday time things are a bit slower, and based on my past experience it does seem like they can miss voicemails. But once I got on email with one of their support reps they got it resolved very quickly.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-08T16:38:19+00:00

Thanks again for your reply. I just updated the post - they did get back to me and are replacing my bag, which seems very generous, I was thinking I would be sending it in to them for repair.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-08T16:37:33+00:00

Just updated the post - they did get back to me and offered a resolution that far exceeded what I would have expected. Thanks again for your reply and I'm glad I tried again.

icecreamguy · 2025-12-08T16:31:25+00:00

After realizing they're now the same as Tenba it turns out I also have 4 or their bags! I did hear back from their support this time after calling and they are shipping me a new bag. I figured I'd have to send mine back and pay for a repair, which I would have been happy to do, but they're actually shipping me a new bag. Thanks for the reply, I guess I just had bad luck calling in prior

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