Photo-A-Day II

[Shannow]

To continue on from the last thread, which has become a bit bogged down due to it's sheer size, big thanks to everyone who contributed to it, btw.

To reiterate, this is a thread to post recent pics and comment/criticise on those posted by other users.
Anyone should feel free to post in here, regardess of ability, or indeed whether or nto you have a camera. Please take the time to comment on other people's work though, be it to criticise, ask questions about techique, etc. Try and keep it to photos you have taken recently, lets you and everyone be able to look back and see how your work is coming along, and if you're going to post ehre, folk might photo shop your work to suggest improvements, if this bothers you, post only websize watermarked versions if you must.

The hard and fast rules:

- Only one post containing pictures per day
- One to three pics maximum is probably most manageable.
- Pics MUST be your own work.
- If you can, try and include some shooting data with your images, shutter speed, film type, camera, aperture etc, easy to do with extracted EXIF data form digital shots
- Don't post the same picture more than once (unless you have modified it in some way, obviously)
- For the love of the Gods, keep images posted in here under 800x600 (or link to the larger verions in the gallery)
- Don't be a dick.


I meant to make the last thread monthly, and forgot to, i WILL be doing it with this one, even thuogh it's a bit late in, a new one will be started by me or someone come the 1st of March.

I've not been taking much altely because of work, and these are fairly crap, but i am a fan of dark skies with bright foreground.

[JINX]

I think one of the rules should be you must comment on the last picture before you post your own even if it is just

“ Nice picture^ “

[Woolies]

Originally Posted by Shannow

I've not been taking much altely because of work, and these are fairly crap, but i am a fan of dark skies with bright foreground.

http://content.alternativenation.net...n0011small.jpg
http://content.alternativenation.net...rop_189336.JPG

first pic I want more punch in the tree colours - go back and turn the Sun up a couple of stops...
second is nice, nothing special or impressive but nothing bin worthy or horrid, just "nice" - I think I chopped about a fifth off the top and preferred it though, the sky just ain't special enough there for me to have so much





For some reason I think I have always shot this DJ Box from the other side so this was a new angle for me - waiting for a light/spot on the sax may have been cleverer but I was just really snapping here.
1600iso, 1/10 @ f4.0, flash -2 stops

[Campestral]

i love that pic! you caught everyone mid beat. the dj, sax player, guy behind sax, white t shirt guy, everyone is during

[2plus2isfive]

The only think i'd critique there is the blown out lights dead center under the decks, my eyes seem to fix in on them first. Don't suppose there was much you could do though save exposing for them and sacrificing the rest of the picture :s Seems a bit cloudy as well but obv that's just the atmosphere of the club.
Seems fairly low grain for ISO1600, i'm sure my camera picks up a ton at anything over 1/20th.

[AsheAshe]

Noodles...tricky!


Camera Make: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 20D
Image Date: 2006:02:11 00:26:05
Flash Used: Yes (Manual)
Focal Length: 34.0mm
CCD Width: 3.01mm
Exposure Time: 0.0063 s (1/160)
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO equiv: 100
White Balance: Auto
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: Manual
Exposure Mode: Manual

[Largest of Gregs]

please try discuss the other photos before going wild with your own!

[AsheAshe]

Not everyone can critique well though so thats a silly rule imo. Also some people, like myself, are overly critical and this can negatively affect peoples confidence when it comes to posting more of their work. Critique should be encouraged, but not mandatory surely?

[Shannow]

Originally Posted by AsheAshe

Not everyone can critique well though so thats a silly rule imo. Also some people, like myself, are overly critical and this can negatively affect peoples confidence when it comes to posting more of their work. Critique should be encouraged, but not mandatory surely?

I agree entirely, and hope the first post i made doesn't make it seem like I intended otherwise.

[Woolies]

threads with rules suck so no, not mandatory critiques but thems that never give will soon stop receiving


noodlepic: fine & nice, though if the idea was to go with "uh-oh noodles are tricky with twa bittys o wood rather than a forkspoon" then I want to see more mess - sauce or summat on face & bib maybe but then possibly it'd just look messy...

[AsheAshe]

hah no, thats just the caption i put on it from the look on his face

with the dj booth shot i think a lot of the problem is it was shot at iso1600 & such a slow shutter speed. using a high iso setting like that will exaggerate any light features unless theres a narrow aperture. youd have probably gotten a more natural image if you ditched the flash and opened up the aperture a little (assuming your camera has wider settings). The light in the DJ Box would then illuminate that part of the image & if you used around iso 800 & F2.8 you should still have the rest of the image in detail, with a nice bit of background blur for everything else. but i think in those kind of conditions youre either limited by equipment or the conditions themselves as theres not a lot you can do about it heh.

if your camera has RAW capabilities, shoot in that as you can then cain the exposure & WB later



Imnot overly keen on this image (mostly as i know you can do better!) as i have a pet hate for centralised images. on the plus side it does have a good contrast range, on the negative side theres not a whole lot going on with it. (he says, having posted a picture of noodles..)

I quite often find that ive taken such pictures myself and that the picture doesnt do the actual sight any justice at all, so i tend to piss around with them in photo shop for a bit



with some levels adjustments you can really bring out the moody skies and the sunlit tones on the trees which makes it a little more interesting and adds a little punch (you could even make an HDR of the scene if you had a few shots)



Or you can add some contrast punch to it and make it black and white. looks better bigger though!

but for anything involving trees you cant beat a bit of fake infra red



anyways thats my take on it!

[Withnail]

I like the noodles shot, but thought maybe a touch lighter in the face would have been good? it seems quite flat, between the colour of the noodles, the wall and the skin tones, and even the napkin, they all seem to be tending towards a slight sort of brown/beige?

The first 'shopped shot of the trees is incredible looking, there's nothing to add to that, I'd say. What's an HDR, though?

This is my first attempt at using RAW and adjusting the levels once I got back.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8...7/CRW_8803.jpg

Camera model: Canon EOS D30
Date/Time: 2006:01:29 21:19:52
Resolution: 800 x 535
Flash used: No
Focal length: 42.0mm
Exposure time: 3.200 s
Aperture: f/4.5
ISO equiv.: 200
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure: Manual

Edit: My own thought, just looking at it was that a) it wasn't angled right to take it, and i had to sort it after b) the focus is fairly sloppy.

[AsheAshe]

what are you using to process your .raws?

i use Pixmantec Rawshooter 2006 but they offer their 2005 version for free on their site at www.pixmantec.com - its very quick compared to most raw processing programs.

I like that image its very colorful. not very sharp in the details though, was it well supported? a good tip with >1" exposures is to use the timer. The red sky is very nice

HDR is a High Dynamic Range. Photoshop CS2 can do this for you but it requires you to put a little more work in

see here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hdr.shtml

[Withnail]

Using photoshop CS2 to process them. I'll have a wee look at that.

It was on a tripod, although I didn't think of using the timer to stop it juddering as I pressed the button... *notes for future*. Sadly i discovered when I got home that my tripod is cracked and was slipping slightly, which hasn't helped the details. I'm going to fix it, use the tripod and timer and maybe try it again tonight (yeah, sucker for punishment sitting on bridges into the gorbals at 9/10 at night... )

[AsheAshe]

yeah using the timer is much better cos no matter how steady your hand is theres always that initial pressure downwards and then upwards so it affects sharpness