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QC for images with motion blur - too risky to upload?


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I could use some advise from more experienced contributors.  I have a number of long exposure night shots that are sharp and in focus but people, palm fronds and vehicles exhibit motion blur due to the extended exposure times.  Are they likely to pass or fail QC?  The following are a couple examples.

 

http://www.lynnpalmerstudio.com/p157166962/h2e78c4ff#h2e78c4ff

 

http://www.lynnpalmerstudio.com/p157166962/h21f544ac#h21f544ac

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As far as I know motion blur is accepted if there is a sensible area in focus and the motion blur is clearly recognizable in the small presentation image.

 

And some blur can be accepted in the corners.

 

If in focus I'd have a go with these, I think - however, I don't presume this is the full size - which should be the ones to be judged.

 

But one never knows when to hit the limit.

 

Besides this I think you are dealing with a shallow depth which should be quite acceptable as long as the focus is at the right spot.....

 

Reminds me of an image of a landing jet aircraft I held back due to blurring heat waves reflected from the ground and making the aircraft blurred. Something else, of course, but I didn't dare to upload.

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The car photo should be good if the car is sharp. The other image should be good if the building and landscape is sharp. The point being that the subject or significant portions of these kind of images needs to be sharp. Motion of people and other vehicles should be acceptable. The easiest side approach is to identify the out of focus items in the description text. That way a buyer can make their own choice.

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As already mentioned above, what I found from my submissions of night shots is that, so long as the stationary things you focused on are sharp, motion blur of moving objects/people should not cause you any problems.

 

This shot has plenty of blur on the people, but the stationary objects are sharp:

Empire-Cinema-Casino-with-people-gathere

 

Parm

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Yes, in the second image the car and all fixed objects and buildings are sharp.  People are background elements, are not super sharp, and in some cases are blurred while people walking by have left faint ghost images.

 

In the other image the people standing are selectively blurred, people walking have left a slight ghost image in places, palm fronds are blurred but tree trunks are sharp, vehicles are moving and thus blurred.  Buildings are sharp. The motorcyclist in the foreground is moving and therefor is not sharp.

 

Both images were taken on South Beach in Miami; the lights are flashing, the cars and people are passing by non-stop, trees are moving in the sea breeze, etc.  I used a tripod but it's virtually impossible to shoot without some motion blur in the images.  

 

Based on Parm's image I will risk the car image.  I'm still worried about having a blurred cyclist in the foreground even if he isn't the subject and most of the rest is in focus.

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Thank you Colin.  One last question, in the first image there is a Megatron-style TV display in the background that is so bright that it's very nearly white or burned out.  It has slight detail showing but it is distorting the edges of the dark figures in front of it (you must zoom in beyond 100% to see the jagged edge).  It is a very small portion of the image but will it cause QC issues? 

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Lynn, I just did a search on Alamy and found 6,367 images under "motion blur night scene." I have many deliberately blurred images on Alamy.  

 

I can't comment on your two images because I can't see them large enough.

 

Good luck,

 

Edo

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I can't see it being an issue Lynn. The image is nicely exposed overall and in a night scene you will always have blown out highlights. I have played in Photoshop with night images, blending images that are 4, 5 and 6 stops underexposed to get everything within the histogram. The results look awful, totally flat and lifeless. Have a look at my collection and find teh night scenes, you'll see that practically all have overexposed highlight areas. Its if the main subject is blown out you will have trouble but with highlight details like that I can't see a problem. I would upload them with no qualms at all (provided of course that the sharpness is there). With the temperature below freezing here in Quebec its tempting to go to Miami where you can still wear a T-shirt. 

Col

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I'm not one to drag this out forever, I guess I'll go for it and upload the two images.  I've tried to fix images in Photoshop before and they do look flat, especially when the main subject is light.

 

Thank you all for your help.  I should know by the end of the week if they are ok.

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There is often motion blur if an image contains both static and moving objects. As long as the main subject is sharp I don't think it matters one bit if subsidiary parts of the image are blurred.

 

I'm about to upload this one to Alamy, where the central, static part of the subject is clearly sharp but the blur occurs in a transparent layer over the top of the main subject. I'm hoping that QC understand the dynamics of this kind of shot.

 

ffen8351.jpg

 

Alan

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I think you're all correct. I don't want to risk it at this stage with some fails under my belt this year (you have seen them all). Don't want to risk my good standing.

Otherwise I would have submitted it by it's own, just to make sure someone is looking at it. (And to silently make a point of course.)

 

I will rent a 1Dx or an A7R this winter. This image is a 3x focus stack already, there's no way to get a thing like this in focus in one go with a longer lens. The people are 1 take, but the street; the lights and the buildings are 4 or 5 more: my Canon cannot cope with those different light levels. Nor can paper or screen, but that's why we have HDR, this however was all done by hand.

The Nikon D800 and Sony A7R can cope perfectly with those light levels, before you all start cheering for those, I know. And the 1Dx would cope with shorter exposures to stop the people. No system would give enough depth of field btw: I tried the RX100 in the same spot.

 

- thanks for looking and your comments!

 

wim

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I think you're all correct. I don't want to risk it at this stage with some fails under my belt this year (you have seen them all). Don't want to risk my good standing.

Otherwise I would have submitted it by it's own, just to make sure someone is looking at it. (And to silently make a point of course.)

 

I will rent a 1Dx or an A7R this winter. This image is a 3x focus stack already, there's no way to get a thing like this in focus in one go with a longer lens. The people are 1 take, but the street; the lights and the buildings are 4 or 5 more: my Canon cannot cope with those different light levels. Nor can paper or screen, but that's why we have HDR, this however was all done by hand.

The Nikon D800 and Sony A7R can cope perfectly with those light levels, before you all start cheering for those, I know. And the 1Dx would cope with shorter exposures to stop the people. No system would give enough depth of field btw: I tried the RX100 in the same spot.

 

- thanks for looking and your comments!

 

wim

 

Wim, that low light scene might have been a good candidate for hand-held twilight mode. I've gotten some good results using this feature with my NEX-6. Plus they have passed QC, like this one (shot at f/4 and downsized to 30MB). Obviously I had no motion blur to deal with, though.

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