My Photography

[Brisa]

Here are two pictures I have taken since christmas when I got my camera. I would like to know what I could have done when taking the picture (not on the computer) to improve the images. ALL comments welcome, bad and good.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Bri...bin2smalltf.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brisa/DSCF1070tf.jpg

Links for now until i learn how to resize...

Edited February 19, 2006 by Brisa

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

first one looks as if its been brightened a bit? , looks good but the bird doesnt stand out enough. maybe get it just off center?

2nd one is also good , but looks like you cut a bit off the top?

[Brisa]

Bird was brightened a bit in photoshop. Other one hasn't been cropped or anyting.

The bird was taken in a dark bush. I had apparature open f8, shutter speed around 50 and iso 200. Don't know how I could have made it brighter without losing quality, thats what I am keep to learn.

Edit: PS using a fuji s5600 so any tips from the f-stop/rob etc would need to be able to be done on this camera. Thanks

Edited February 19, 2006 by Brisa

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

i know very little about cameras and stuff , i was just making constructive criticism

maybe try getting hold of rob p or f-stop junkie , seem to be the resident photoheads

[Howard Hughes]

The picture of the robin is a bit under-exposed, and the composition seems a little cluttereed... a shallower depth of field would have helped. (Edit: Use a larger aperture than f8, this would of also solved the under-exposure) But other than that I think its a pretty cool shot.

The other shot seems good as well, except I would have perhaps included a bit more of the surrounding area, like some foreground interest to perhaps give the shot a little more perspective.

Other than that, looks pretty good. Keep it up.

Perhaps sign up to Deviant Art - should get some feedback on there.

Edited February 19, 2006 by Adds

[Brisa]

Cheers Charel and Adds.

Made a mistake, the camera was on f8 for the tower one. Think it was around f3.2 for the bird. Would a higher ISO make mush difference to the quality?

[Tomm]

Yeah, I agree with Adds - If you have the aperture wide open on the robin, you'll lose the depth of field and make the bird stand out more. It is slightly under-exposed, but probably nothing you couldn't brighten up with photoshop. Try and bring out the orange a bit. It's a cool picture though, how far away were you? At full zoom on that camera, what is the max aperture?

I like the tower one too, though I think it might be better if you took two steps back and got slightly more grass and more sky nearer the top. And maybe edit out the aerial on the top - it's a bit distracting. Exposure is spot on though.

Cheers Charel and Adds.

Made a mistake, the camera was on f8 for the tower one. Think it was around f3.2 for the bird. Would a higher ISO make mush difference to the quality?

Depends on the camera. ISO400 should be good, but I don't know what you camera is like. I probably wouldn't go any higher than that though, on my camera ISO800 starts to look grainy. You might just have to use a longer exposure - Try a tripod?

[deanie-b]

Yeah, depends on your camera.

I would probably use more zoom\longer lens to isolate cluttered backgrounds more, but you would need to use a tripod, I find my 70-300 covers me well for most shots

[ogre]

In the second photo i would try to photoshop someone dropping off it (with or without bike deppending on my mood) but thats just me

[Brisa]

Cheers all. The robin I was pretty close, probably around 10 feet away. Was zoomed in a bit.

The tower is a hard one to get in shot as that tower sits on a mount not 20 feet from a clif edge haha. Have some other that show a bit more sceneary but more manmade stuff in the shot than I would like.

Hopefully can get some impressive photo's now with these tips.

[Rob_P]

Haven't really read many replies but yeh, 2.8 is what you need in low light but also gives max depth depth of field, making the robin stand out.

Iso, the higher the more noise, I know from my fuji that the S series seem to be very noisey. On mine it didn't go over 400 so 800 is pushing it a bit really image quality wise. The higher the iso, the more pixles it makes up and obviously it gets it wrong and this makes noise ( i think)

Anyway had a little play.......

Original

Mine...

Just some subtle changes:

Levels, lifted the midtones and highlights.

Hue/sat (+14) brought out the colours more

Curves

then used the burn tool on 2% on the twigs etc to make the robin stand out more

unsharp mask of 100

Crop

Looks much better

[Brisa]

Thats amazing Rob! Need to learn some of that trickery!

Thanks

[Walleee]

Hafta get ye out on a ride and get some Norn' Irish action shots up here or something......

[Brisa]

Was out today with stephen, got a few. Will post them up later as Im off out now!

[F-Stop Junkie]

[attachmentid=2727]

Here are two pictures I have taken since christmas when I got my camera. I would like to know what I could have done when taking the picture (not on the computer) to improve the images. ALL comments welcome, bad and good.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Bri...bin2smalltf.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/Brisa/DSCF1070tf.jpg

Links for now until i learn how to resize...

I think the size is OK for TF to be honest...

I've had a quick play with the Robin one, and I think it is just under exposed. Since it was taken at F3.2, you couldn't have gone for a bigger aperture, so I would have suggested that you either bump the shutter speed down one stop (down to 1/30th of a second) or take the ISO up to 200 (it was taken at 100).

Why did you have the camera in manual mode though? Why not just let it sort out the best exposure. Also why wasn't the flash on? That could have lifted the bird out of it's surroundings.

Why is there an obsession on TF generally for people to use manual modes? Nice, clever people at Fuji, Nikon and Canon spend a lot of time making sure the camera can do what you want it to. Unless you carry a light meter around - and I guess there's only three people on TF who have one - you can't do any better.

The only real problem with a shot like this is that it's surrounded by so many elements that are brighter than it. You can't do anything about it, and with a point and shoot digital camera, you can not get a suitably small depth of field to start blurring bits out. Assuming you were fully zoomed out, you got the best you can get.

I think you should check your settings on your camera. If you haven't resized either of these, then you're probably not running in the possible highest resolution - in other words, you're only using part of the cameras ability. There is also a lot of sharpening/compression going on in both these pictures. This is making any noise (NOT grain! No such thing in digital photography...) really stand out. This may also be because when you're saving them in Photoshop, you're selecting quality of 4-6 when I'd suggest 8-10.

The castle one looks ok, but again it's heavily sharpened/compressed. Look at where the tops of the turrets meet the sky, there's like a halo around them. That is the effect you want to remove. I'd say perhaps the castle is slightly underexposed, but if you lighten it then you'll lighten the sky too. No bad thing though.

Haven't really read many replies but yeh, 2.8 is what you need in low light but also gives max depth depth of field, making the robin stand out.

Iso, the higher the more noise, I know from my fuji that the S series seem to be very noisey. On mine it didn't go over 400 so 800 is pushing it a bit really image quality wise. The higher the iso, the more pixles it makes up and obviously it gets it wrong and this makes noise ( i think)

Just some subtle changes:

Levels, lifted the midtones and highlights.

Hue/sat (+14) brought out the colours more

Curves

then used the burn tool on 2% on the twigs etc to make the robin stand out more

unsharp mask of 100

Crop

Given the amount of sharpening going on, I wouldn't sharpen again!

Levels and curves? Can't you do all the adjustment in one step, seeing as they're just modifying the same thing?

Also one thing neither of us have done is to adjust the white balance properly. There's a definite magenta cast where the WB hasn't hit correctly. Just noticed that...

[deanie-b]

Ok, I added my own changes like rob and f-stop junkie

Generally just a tight crop, Lightened the image, AND something noone else spotted, the little fella didn't have any real catchlights in his eyes, so i sorted that out by zooming in, and with a small brush just dotting one in

Edit: Looks quite noisy scaled down

Edited February 19, 2006 by deanie-b

[Walleee]

Was out today with stephen, got a few. Will post them up later as Im off out now!

Sweet I look forward to seeing them!

[Davetrials]

no idea how the f**k u got a pic of one of those f**kers, tey always fly away.

[Brisa]

I assure you, auto mode is complete bollocks. Have some pics of the tower taken in auto and its terrible.

Whats wrong with using manual mode? Its the only way to learn isn't it? I felt that lack of adjustability was reason for buying a new camera.

The photo's were resized using photocleaner but not small enough to be on screen.

Here is a picture of the auto mode of the tower. I think its A LOT worse, will let you decide though.

The robin one was taken the week after christmas, first week with a 'proper' camera to me.

Tower was taken yesterday and I would like to think I have improved consideribly since then.

I have learnt quite a bit in this thread and all you guys have been real helpful! As far as having a light meter, I don't but I do my best to guage the light and surroundings and set the settings to what I think and Im never usually TOO far off. If its something that isn't going to move I take a few test shots and guage as best I can on my little LCD screen what looks right to me.

I would have stuck with my little coolpix if I thought I could have take pictures as good as the ones I am taking now. I simply couldn't and had no control over what it would take at all. Hence the love of manual mode.

This image has not been photoshopped in anyway to prove a fictional point lol. Only resized in photocleaner.

[F-Stop Junkie]

I assure you, auto mode is complete bollocks. Have some pics of the tower taken in auto and its terrible.

Whats wrong with using manual mode? Its the only way to learn isn't it? I felt that lack of adjustability was reason for buying a new camera.

I have learnt quite a bit in this thread and all you guys have been real helpful! As far as having a light meter, I don't but I do my best to guage the light and surroundings and set the settings to what I think and Im never usually TOO far off. If its something that isn't going to move I take a few test shots and guage as best I can on my little LCD screen what looks right to me.

The problem with manual mode is that the camera contains an advanced light meter, so why disregard it? It just seems that some people on TF think that putting the camera in manual mode is the 'right' thing to do. I rarely use manual mode because I let the camera do some of the work for me and give me something less to worry about.

The real question is, do you know why the camera was giving a crap exposure when left to it's own devices? Since you're trying to use the screen to guess the exposure, then you're risking problems of glare on the screen, as well as the gamma on the screen not being accurate and giving you inaccurate exposures.

The best way to learn is to take lots of pictures and see if they come out like you want. If not, why not? Set up experiments to see how the camera reacts, read the manual over and over, look on forums, etc... That way you'll spend less time faffing about with settings (potentially getting them wrong, as you have here) and more time taking good photos. Plus, this will help you take better photos of moving too!

[deanie-b]

look on forums

www.dpforums.com

This site has some excellent tutorials

[AndyT]

I leave mine in manual all the time...

[Mark W]

I usually leave mine in manual just to try and learn, pretty much. However, in Brizzle it was mostly on have just 'cos I was having to react to stuff quickly. However, 'cos of the lighting a lot of the time it f**ked up and I ended up having to bosh 'er back onto manual, especially if there was a cloud-less sky in the background.

For on the fly stuff I prefer have, but for normal shooting where I've got more time I still like just using M and just trying to get it right, pretty much.

[Tomm]

I have it on manual all the time, because the dial on my camera is broken and it's stuck there I really should get that fixed. I would love a Tv mode or even just full auto for taking random snaps where I don't want to think about what I'm doing.

[AndyT]

none of the auto settings are worth it for me.....you can't control iso for one thing...auto is just worthless. Nothing really comes out bad in manual...shoot in raw; do you own shutter speed/ aperture/ iso/metering/white balance etc...get the right lenses...get the right lighting...