How Good is my Photo..?? Discussion.. Any tips, Criticisms or Ideas Please..!!

Ok, think I understand I presume that the higher the rating, the more it neutralises the contrast?

 

Sunshine?

 

In this case I'm not sure that an ND filter is the best option as the over exposed part of the image is well off a horizontal line.

The best (retrospective) course of action would have been to bracket exposures - with a least one for foreground and one for the background and then use HDR or other software to combine them.
Next best might be creating a pseudo HDR image by processing one exposure to bring out the background and then combining it with the foreground.

In this particular case I don't think there's any way one could produce a photo that captured what the human eye can see in a single photographic image as the dynamic range is too great.

 

Hi Freddy,

Your shot is what is known as a "High Contrast Scene" which means it has extremes of highlights and shadows within it, there are a few ways to deal with it, most have been covered already by Armandii and Dave, but I'll mention them again here anyway.

Shoot in manual mode: Point your camera at the sky and half press the shutter button to give yourself a lightmeter reading to remember, lets say its 5 increments over, now do the same for the shadows, lets say it's 7 increments under, best exposure would be 1 increment under (increments are simply the lines on your light meter) as this is the very middle ground. Note that I said best exposure and not correct exposure.

Setup with a tripod and take two shots, one at 5 increments over and another at 7 increments under. Add both of these shots to photoshop in a new document as layers and using a mask reveal the good sky through onto the good foreground using the eraser tool or some such similar method.

Digital cameras cannot capture what the human eye can see, it can capture parts of it at a time only. The Dynamic range of our eyesight is sadly not met by the cameras ability to capture it, this is the only reason HIgh Dynamic Range photography came about, it allows photographs to be taken that cover the complete dynamic range of our eyesight, and the software will combine those shots to take best advantage of both the shadows and highlights and tones in between them. Unfortunately not many people use HDR photography as it was intended to be used and its getting a cult following status now for it's ability to make some weird and wonderful artworks, that's fine if its what you want to do but if HDR photography is used for what it is intended its a superb tool and should not be overlooked or condemned. If the HDR process is done correctly, the photographs viewer would not know it's HDR.

Shoot in RAW mode: When you take photo's in jpeg mode on your camera, your limiting yourself to an 8 bit image and that image will be to a certain point compressed and adjusted by the camera using some presets, factory set, within the camera. If you shoot in RAW mode you get a 16 bit iamge (its actually nearer 12, but thats another discussion) so there is more information within the photo to work with and it comes out of the camera completely raw and unaffected by prests, this gives a greater scope of post processing ability in a RAW converter (RAW converters must be used to give a final jpeg for general use ie viewing online, printing, emailing etc.). RAW converters are incredibly flexible in what they can do and for your photo Freddy it could help with calming down that sky and revealing some detail in the pikes.



I hope you dont mind, but I grabbed your photo and have given it a quick edit to show a hint of what can be done. Its by no means a great job but its an 8 bit image thats small in size...so not a great deal of information to work with. However, it does show something can be done and with a full resolution copy of this photo, I could do much more, with a RAW version I could do even more...but with a bracketed set of photo's I could utilise HDR and do yet more and produce stunning results.

The final option is to wait for camera sensor manufacturers to hurry up and make a sensor that can capture what the eye can see.....I dont think thats too far away now.

Steve...

 

Panning is not as easy as you think it would be, follow the subject take the snap..job done, but if you do it that way you'll get blurred photo's so you must follow the subject and continue to do so as you press the shutter button, it's not easy!

I think you have done very very well here Woo for such a difficult subject as a bird in flight, very difficult with all those flappy things, there is even a small catchlight in it's eye!

Steve...

 

Hiya Steve, thanks for that great reply.
Sadly, as hinted upon by 'Mandy', I don't have any programs for post adjustments of pics, and even if I did, I wouldn't have a clue how to go about it. On my old PC, I had PS, but it was as much as I could do to use the 'image adjustment' tab! Somewhere, I think I have the CD that came with the camera, but I'm not sure if it was for more advanced techniques of processing Maybe you could recommend an EASY TO USE program/converter that utilises RAW?

Cheers...Freddy

 

A "bridge" camera?

 

A camera between a compact and a full whistles and bells DSLR...it "bridges" the gap.

Steve...