The Filter Competition !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bernhardas]

The Competition:
- The overall goal of the competition is to show what filters can do for us in the digital age and also assess which of them make sense to use.
- I sill think a two weekly rolling competition cycle would be realistic. The topics should be announced well in advance.
- The topics can be wider in nature including groups of filters
- We should have a schedule of at least four competition topics at all times. That leaves time for people to prepare.
- During the two "live weeks" people should upload their competition entries.
- An entry should have at least an end result and a short description about the technique/workflow used. A mini review, before and after pictures and making of pictures are optional but welcome.
- We choose a winner and he can add another topic at the end of the announced list.

What do we want to achieve.
1) have fun
2) tinker with our gear
3) have some friendly interaction on the forum.
4) We could also get a feeling from the postings and the descriptions of the posted filters:
- if they make sense in the digital age
- how difficult is it to replace them by post-processing (one click to many hours of work)
- any new techniques or usage cases for the filter

Friendly, tolerant and wide interpretation of the participation is expected.

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A possible list of of themes (in no particular order)

- Coloured filters
- ND grads
- Coloured graduated filters
- Prisms
- Star filters
- Diffusers
- Lightblaster
- Strange things in front of the lens
- Polarizers
- Softeners
- Diffraction filters
- Discontiuned filters
- Effect and Trick/Filters
- UV and IR Filters
- Close up lenses
- Variable filters
- DIY
- Unusual technique

[bernhardas]

THE FIRST THEMES are:


NOW (as we are starting we should probably open it for an extra week until around 13 September)

ALIEN LANDSCAPE


Last two September weeks

-- Theme of Koen' choice --

First two October weeks

-- Theme of Phil's choice ---

last two October weeks

UNUSUAL THINGS IN FRONT OF THE LENS

First two November weeks

-- Theme of Gary's choice ---

Last two November weeks

-- Theme of Bernhards's choice ---

[SonicScot]

Well, for my period I'd like to go with close-up lenses.

[rudolfkremers]

Brilliant. Can't wait to get going and see what people get up to

[koen kallenberg]

You've picked a tough topic. I made one one day after the topic was announced, wasn't happy with it, but it's still the best I've got.
I am very curious for what kind of photos will be posted.

I'd like to pick coloured skies as my theme.

[rudolfkremers]

[bernhardas]

I will make a start.

You did pick a difficult topic. If one does want to exclude manmade structures and objects as well as vegetation as far as possible it is difficult to find a spot.

My entry pictures are the following pictures from mars!
(sorry that the camera of the rover has some vignetting)





I used the cokin vario pola blue red.
The color changes if the pola is turned in relation to the fixed filter however it also changes if both filters are turned together.
The color spectrum ranges from very blue to very red somewhere in between is a very thin nearly neutral point. Near the neutral point the colors are differentiated depending on the amount of polarization. Much more subtle effects can be achieved.

Photoshop was used to clone some stuff out, but no change to colors in PP.

Frankly I think the the very strong color effects could be easily emulated in PP the more subtle shades with a bit more effort.
It is fun to use it as one can be surprised by the color combinations that result from turning the pola or the whole set-up.
Could of course be used for some video special effects.


A picture without filter and a few examples of the color range are shown below:

without

near neutral

full blue

full red



P.S.: forgot to add the lens: 25 2.8 Zeiss Contax

[bernhardas]

Just to repost the current list of Themes:

THE FIRST THEMES are:

NOW

ALIEN LANDSCAPE

Last two September weeks

COLORED SKY

First two October weeks

-- Theme of Phil's choice ---

last two October weeks

UNUSUAL THINGS IN FRONT OF THE LENS

First two November weeks

-- Theme of Gary's choice ---

Last two November weeks

-- Theme of Bernhards's choice ---

[rudolfkremers]

Great stuff! I am hoping to post something this weekend or Mon/Tue.
(Real world obligation is kicking my arse atm)

Just wanted to say that the "Alien Landscape" theme can be interpreted pretty wide. Some manmade stuff looks totally alien, as do some actual lifeforms/vegetation.

Check out my facebook album containing a photo-diary of a dimensional lost traveller, visiting strange floral dimensions.
Ahem.

Click here to see

[koen kallenberg]

I stayed with my initial picture which I am not too happy about. Contrary to the martian pictures (which are very nice) I wanted something black and white, preferably something dead. Unfortunately I found only nice dead tree, and it was too alive for my liking, in an environment which is also too alive.
I was going for something like this, but from a lower point of view with a wider angle, and an ultra long exposure so you could see the clouds move. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to do this. The filter used for this picture is a ND grad, nothing special, although it always is challenging to make it work on a panorama with something sticking above the horizon.

I took it with a 28mm f/3.5 nikkor at I think f/8. This is the result of 4 images stitched.

[bernhardas]

The clouds look impressive. I am sure the picture has a lot of detail in its original size.

[rudolfkremers]

I have some candidates, but not sure if I can post them tonight or tomorrow. Can we include Monday as a final day?

[rudolfkremers]

Here are some previews, but I am not sure yet if I will go with these...




And finally



I have some quite different ones I need to process, and one location which I may be able to try tomorrow morning.
Am enjoying this a lot!

[bernhardas]

Interesting. Is that the Hoya Andromeda?

Do not worry about the deadline too much, at the moment we are a handful of relaxed people. So no need to stress ourselves unnecessary.

[rudolfkremers]

[rudolfkremers]

It's hard to stop....

[bernhardas]

Good stuff!

[rudolfkremers]

A family member has fallen ill (but will be ok) so I won't try to get that last attempt in.
Should be able to expand my posts with a proper breakdown of methodology and philosophy Tue/Wed though.

[rudolfkremers]

Right, so I have run out fo time, as I am about to go on paternal leave.

Some quick words though:

As Bernhardas said, I used the Hoya Andromeda filter, because it does two things. There is the fantastical Prism affect, which causes nice spectrum bursts to come out of all light sources in the image, but it also offsets parts of the image and creates a kind of ghost image.

I reckoned I could use both effects to create a landscape.
Next I decided to use a wide angle lens, with strong colour definition, and ended up with the Nikkor-N.C. Auto1:28 24mm.
The wide perspective was to aid with perspective lines, which I wanted to utilise to create something like this:




A few experiments led to this:




And this:




This one did not work as well:




I still thought something was missing, so I decied to add a miniature from Blade Runner to the scene, and try to fake it as a life size prop.










And here are some details..





I tried to blur the foreground a bit to create the ilusion of size, but never got it right. I really love how close I got though.
Ultimately I wanted to combine that miniature with one of my earlier attempts, but I ran out of time.

As you can see the Hoya Andromeda has added a lot to the whole process. The prism and ghost image qualities can be used for all kinds of effects I reckon, and I will pursue this. I can't wait to use the filter in a city setting, as I think it's amazing.

Not sure which one of my images was best for the compo though. Anybody has feedback?

R

[rudolfkremers]

[rudolfkremers]

[koen kallenberg]

The tree is a good hour from my house away, and with my studies being very busy now I don't see it happening on the short term. However, things might get better in winter, which will also make the surroundings look better I think. Who knows.

I really like the results, and I think it's funny how I'm the only one who submitted black and white. I had no clue how to get outer space colours, but I have to say I like the results. I do like the fuzziness and the colours because it looks like it's extremely hot. Reminds a bit of a planet without an atmosphere. Especially the ones where the buggy isn't completely in focus.
There is one thing I'm a bit conflicted about, it's the shallow DoF. On the plus side, it gives the photos some mystery because we can't see anything, and the unsharpness works really well in some of the photographs. On the other hand it provides us a sense of scale (for example the miniature effect of tilt shift lenses works because of the shallow DoF, our brains take it into consideration to judge scale) which makes it easier to imagine this being a toy and not life size. But that's of course not the most important in this series, as space buggies can be small I guess. For example, I have no clue about the dimensions of Curiosity.

[rudolfkremers]

[koen kallenberg]

I can imagine, especially because with more things (almost) in focus the viewer has a higher possibility of seeing a flaw which destroys the illusion

[rudolfkremers]