Hi, I am not happy with the composition of some of my shots and have been having a look at other peoples work. I "borrowed" a shot from the site of one guy that impresses me and wanted the opinions of you guys and gals as to what focal lenth you would consider was used on the shot above. I would say it was a longer focal length of maybe 300mm or so because of the composition of the shot. What is your opinion

This is actually a pretty wide lens - he/she is most likely standing not far out of shot of the base of this image.

The top line in this example is where the horizon SHOULD be if it was a longer lens - it's would be VERY compresses and almost image distortion at all.

The lower line is where the horizon actually BENDS downward. This isn't bad as the camera was properly levelled, but it DOES curve downward (lens distortion/curves straight lines) is a dead giveaway of wide angle lenses.

That is the only real giveaway as everything else in this shot is organic and can be shaped in any number of ways. But I would wager that the front face of the rock formation on the right is straight and vertical and not slightly angled forward (which is you vertical line giveaway).

Hope that helps. This looks like something one of the Meunch guys (David and Marc) would have taken - www.muenchphotography.com - their images are amazing!

-Lew ;-)

I don't know what to tell you about the lens Lew, but I know of a software solution that you might want to look into: http://www.kekus.com/software/plugin.html http://panotools.sourceforge.net/

Well that blows my theory right out of the water.I asked this question as I try this sort of shot and it never seems to work for me.If I use wide angle - 10 to 20 mm on my Nikon D100 It would never have looked like this.
Guess I had better practice a lot more.
Thanks for your help.
Eddie

yes, i think it's a wide angle too. Like 18mm on a hal-frame dslr. But compo made me think about à 50mm lens in full frame...

Yeah, CS2 and CS3 have a filter for this as well - Lens Correction - everything from bulging and pinching to color fringe correction. I use it regularly for one of my clients who has a really bad blue/yellow fringe - you KNOW someone's gonna ask "who did your postwork?"

Some photorapher really LIKE the lens distortion - I mentioned the Meunch family - they use it to their benefit and it actually enhances their images when they do (like this example of a Meunch image).

Mighty fine distortion there, yessir!

If you look at the original photographers portfolio he gives a description of what camera and  lens were used for this shot.  http://www.joecornish.com/portfolio/view.asp?pid=133&sectionid=19&count=5

Comparing the two shots side by side this appears to have been taken probably on a dslr with a wide angle lens from the same spot. If it were a full frame dslr it coould have been something like the 16-35 or more probably due to the distortions noted above the 17-40.

On the Lee filters site is another where he explains what filters were used

http://www.leefilters.com/CPGalleryImg.asp?PageID=407

I known it's in German, butb this page by Sigma might be bhelpful:

http://www.sigma-foto.de/cms/bildwinkel/brennweitenvergleich.html

it shows you in Fleash a comparison between lenses from 10mm to 800mm, macro, converters etc.

You're shure it's a photograph, and not created with Vue, Bryce, WorlBuilder, Terragen or any other landscape soft? It looks rather unreal to me.

Okay, my math is a bit rusty - the Nikkor 90mm (any brand, really - it's just a size conversion for format) on 4x5 is roughly equivelant to a 28-30mm for 35mm film (in a nutshel, divide by 3? - a 150 is basically normal length for 4x5). Which would roughly be somewhere in he vicinity of a 17-20mm lens for an APS-C sized digital sensor?

That sound about right?

Sounds about right to me Lew.

I would guess he is using a 10-20mm lens and has had to zoom a little because of the filters used so as not to get any vignetting.

Who took it Eddie ? Maybe we could ask them ?

I'm not referring to the wondeful shot by said photographer, but the image the threadstarter shows.

Granted the clouds are different than the ones in the add for Lee Filters, and different (as well as the lighting on the rocks) than the one for the FIRST Joe Cornish link, but it actually looks like all THREE versions were shot by him with hs large format 5x4 inch (I was saying 4x5 because i'm a pompous American and we refer to the smaller length first  4x5, 5x7, 8x10, 11x14 - get it?) Ebony (brand, not color) camera with a Nikkor 90mm lens.

It was in his description in his persnoal gallery on his site.

It was taken at Elgol, where you can apparently oversee Cullin Hills. Where all that is in this world, I haven't the foggiest notion as he didn't include a country in his description.

Elgol  and the Cullin Hills lie on the Isle of Skye. Skye lies at the west side of Scotland, between the main land and the Outer Hebrides, rather to the North.

It was there that bonnie prince Charlie fled and was hidden after the massacre at Culloden, which makes many Scots still sing that "we can still rise up, and be the Nation again that stood against them, proud Edward (this was many centruries before Culloden, when the scots had won!) army, and sendthem homewards to think again.

Scotland is one of my dream destinations. You don't inhabit that land, you're tolerated by it. Pity the drive on the left. But ahhh... the Islay whiskies...

Back to this world...

It is Isle of Skye, Scotland.
You'll see the same beach in my gallery with a couple of cattle on it.  This spot is just around the headland you see behind the cattle. A very popular spot to take photographs made famous by the Joe Cornish original. I've never had any good light when I have visited hence always refrained from even trying to make any captures along the rocky bit looking across to the Cuillins. 
Sometime I'll actually stay in Elgol so give me more chance to get some captures from there in the evenings. It is a torturous single track road to get there and I don't fancy driving it much at night if the cloud moves in like it very often does.

Few weeks ago I spent a whole day on top of the mountain behind Elgol waiting for the right light to take a panorama - in the end all I got was wet as the rain swept in and I had pack up the gear to trudge back to the car . 

Scotland - been on my travel list for years! Whenever I can ever find the money and time I'd love to travel there.

This just gives me another place to find one day...