# Yosemite Winter Sunset (.CR2 + TIFF)



## grahamclarkphoto (Jan 22, 2014)

I just got back from Yosemite weekend during a landscape photography community meetup thing in SF. Last winter I was there and there was quite a bit of snow on the ground, this year... not so much! In fact days were t-shirt and sandal weather, nights were just about freezing but not quite.

Just a bit of snow on the east side of the park (shadow side), while the west side of the park was pretty dry and sunny all day (waterfall side). This viewpoint is the most widely photographed location in the park as many of the great photographers would benchmark their work against this classic composition. 

I've had my 6-stop B+W filter stuck on the end of my 77mm adapter ring for GNDs, so all my exposures are pretty far out on exposure times, which I've found to blend twilight and sunset colors together for a truly impressive color gradient. ISO 50 F22 at 3:30 is usually where I start at the beginning of sundown, and add 30 second intervals thereafter, up to 4 minutes at around minute 10 after sundown. Then it's time to move to a 3-stop... unless you have a stuck 6-stop.

The download files include the RAW .CR2 file as well as the TIFF16BIT file of the slight adjustments.if you open both and move between them you can see the before and after of very slight adjustment in exposure values - color was pretty well saturated by low ISO number, maybe a little bit too much even on native saturation.







> > > The .CR2 + TIFF can be downloaded here < < <

It was about 3 days and some photographers got some really awesome shots! (if you're in SF, check out landscapephotographysf.com)

If you have any questions let me know!

Graham


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## grahamclarkphoto (Jan 22, 2014)

I almost forgot add the exposure!

*280s | F22 | ISO 100 | 17mm*


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## alek35 (Jan 22, 2014)

Nice picture! 
One question though - the CR2 looks 2 stops underexposed to me and at f/22 you are losing some sharpness due to diffraction. Wouldn't it have become even better had it been shot at say f/11 ?

Regards,
Thomas


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## grahamclarkphoto (Jan 22, 2014)

alek35 said:


> Nice picture!
> One question though - the CR2 looks 2 stops underexposed to me and at f/22 you are losing some sharpness due to diffraction. Wouldn't it have become even better had it been shot at say f/11 ?
> 
> Regards,
> Thomas



At least 3 stops of underexposure on this one!

Without F22 on this particular subject (lower foreground just within minimum focus distance) the focus overall is much softer. lenses perform best somewhere in the middle of the range, however with wide-angle low F numbers like that don't work without the need for focus stacking. 

I'd rather maximize F22 - which is of very high quality on good lenses if used within the MFD - than bring a photograph into Photoshop.


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