I was just setting up “the stage” for photographing my Vostro 1400 (which, by the way, goes on sale tonight :) and fired a couple of test shots to fine-tune the off-camera strobes. My setup was relatively simple - a piece of white paper on the floor, one SB-800 3 feet away from “the stage” on my right hand side, 3 feet tall, pointing down at approx 45 degrees through a white umbrella, set at 1/16 of the power and the other SB-800 4 feet away on my left hand side pointing straight up on manual at 1/4th of its power. D300 with built in flash in commander mode at ISO 200, 1/100, f/5.6-f/7.1 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 at approx 40mm, 3 feet away. I tossed an empty Dove candy bag and fired a test shot… this was what came out:

Few days ago I was going through my photo trash bin and stumbled upon this shot:

D300 + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8, ISO 640, F/8, 1/80

It was taken in the Lettuce Lake park on a dull winder evening, during the season when local nature almost goes “black and white” for a couple of months :) Actually, I sort of trashed the entire series from that night because there was absolutely no mood in any of the photos I brought home that day. Anyways, I was comparing Capture NX2 performance to its older version and this photo was my guinea pig.

Opened it in Capture NX, switched Picture Control to Vivid, bumped up overall Color Saturation, dropped a control point to the green grass, increased brightness and saturation, dropped another one to the yellowish lit trees, increased their brightness and saturation, and finally dropped a control point onto the water, cranked up contrast and brightness (making it look a lot crispier and almost frostier :) Sharpened the entire photo and saved as JPEG. Overall, took me about a minute or two.

The result was impressively unexpected… I think 75 degrees warm florida winter evening turned into a beautiful autumn landscape, depicting early November morning with crispy cold air (40F? :) and almost frozen water (should have tossed some ice in there :)

Here it is:

Click on each image to see x-Large version.