Image Leveling/Straightening Tip
In this month's photo competition with the theme of "Birds & Water", I've been noticing an error that is quite often made, that I used to make myself. It is very difficult to straighten an image where all you see is the subject and its water reflections. Are those waves and ripples at an angle to level? It can be very disconcerting when trying to decide.
I found an easy method to correct for this:
Looking in the center area of your photo where there are some reflections in the water, try to find a part of the image that is clearly represented in the subject as well as its reflection -- the tip of a wing feather, a bright tree-trunk in the background, etc. Then use your image straightening or rotation tool to strike a perfectly vertical line between the two. This will assure your picture is as straight to the true (but unseen) horizon as if you had used a bubble-level or plumb-bob on your camera and tripod. You are, in effect, using the image itself as your precision bubble-level.
Avoid trying to use subject + reflection features at the edge of a photo as the keystone, pincushion, and barrel distortions imparted by the camera's orientation and some wide-angle or telephoto lenses will not allow you to find a true level in those areas.
This method works equally well in any image with water in it. Sometimes that distant stream's shore-line is meandering at an angle. Now you can be sure if it should be tilted or not.
In this month's photo competition with the theme of "Birds & Water", I've been noticing an error that is quite often made, that I used to make myself. It is very difficult to straighten an image where all you see is the subject and its water reflections. Are those waves and ripples at an angle to level? It can be very disconcerting when trying to decide.
I found an easy method to correct for this:
Looking in the center area of your photo where there are some reflections in the water, try to find a part of the image that is clearly represented in the subject as well as its reflection -- the tip of a wing feather, a bright tree-trunk in the background, etc. Then use your image straightening or rotation tool to strike a perfectly vertical line between the two. This will assure your picture is as straight to the true (but unseen) horizon as if you had used a bubble-level or plumb-bob on your camera and tripod. You are, in effect, using the image itself as your precision bubble-level.
Avoid trying to use subject + reflection features at the edge of a photo as the keystone, pincushion, and barrel distortions imparted by the camera's orientation and some wide-angle or telephoto lenses will not allow you to find a true level in those areas.
This method works equally well in any image with water in it. Sometimes that distant stream's shore-line is meandering at an angle. Now you can be sure if it should be tilted or not.
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