On Saturday after a grey, grey adventure on the Ridgeway I decided on an impulse to visit an old childhood haunt of mine, know known as the Coate Water Country Park I believe. I wasn’t expecting to be able to make much photographically in the wall-to-wall greyness but it would be a useful scouting exercise for a future visit down south.
Of course, I took a few shots and the one above came out quite well in the end. This however is a large crop from the original frame. Two reasons, one that I was aware of at the time and one that became apparent when processing the image.
I knew that with the 12mm Samyang fitted I would need to use either a screw-in ND or my full-size 100mm Lee filters to avoid vignetting. However, all I had with me was the Lee Seven5 filters so I composed knowing I would need to lose the left and right hand edges of the frame. Barely an issue on this occasion as I envisaged a square crop so all was fine.
Until I got home and tried to add contrast to the image …
The white lettering around the inside of the front of the lens reflected beautifully in the dark blue water. It is not visible in the RAW file as-exposed but once I started to tweak the image then Hey Presto!
Now there are several possible explanations including light leaking in, a poor quality filter picking up the reflection of the lettering and even the fact that the Samyang proudly proclaims itself in bold white lettering! It was a Lee filter, fitted at the rear of the filter holder with the gasket properly in position so the first two are less plausible I suspect which leaves the bold lettering as suspect numero uno. However, I remember setting the lens at f16 for these images so I wonder if it is also possible that the lens was focused on the back of the filter with such a massive depth of field?
Whatever the cause I shall be getting the black marker out tomorrow at the very least.
Dave's Place 
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