C&C Please

Loire

Hi all,

C&C advice most welcome. First "proper" shooting. Went around Cork city on my bike this morning between 8am - 9am. It was very foggy so I was excited! No Photoshop apart from "auto-correct" and changing to B&W. The final image was however cropped, as I had way too much grass in the foreground. Everything was taken using Auto on the camera, have yet to learn about aperature / shutter speeds etc, and it was, to be honest, too cold to do so!

It wasn't until I viewed these photos that I noticed the specs of dirt on my lens which has spoiled the photos, this was probably because I was cycling around like a lunatic with the camera around my neck! Please therefore ignore these spec marks - lesson learned!

Thanks in advance,
Loire.


North Mall, Cork



Rowers rowing up the Marina



Lee Fields



Fitzgerald's Park

CabanSail

Thanks for putting some images up for C&C.

Firstly the spots are more likely to be on your sensor rather than on the lens (and looking at that lot I think you will have a crop of potato's soon) Sensors need to be cleaned on a regular basis and it's another thing to put on your list to learn.

Looking past the dust, the first image is the best of the set. For using everything on auto and doing a mono conversion by pressing one button you have really done well. The image is well composed with good use of leading lines fading off into the fog. The trees have the right level of contrast for a foggy day. Consider a slight crop to the left to eliminate the half car which is a slight distraction.

The images with the rowers is also quite good. Once again the contrast for a foggy day is about right and the rowers stand out well. I feel it would work better if the lower half of the frame was cropped and also a bit from the left to exclude the infrastructure in the top left corner. This would leave you with a pleasing pano and plenty of negative space for the rowers to move into.

The third image is muddy with little to hold the attention. The eye searches for a subject and the closest it gets is the water on the right. Much the same with the fourth. The tree in the foreground is a good frame but the building at the base is weak as a subject. Cropping off the base, leaving the tree in a square format works better as an abstract.

Loire

CabanSail wrote: »

Thanks for putting some images up for C&C.

Firstly the spots are more likely to be on your sensor rather than on the lens (and looking at that lot I think you will have a crop of potato's soon) Sensors need to be cleaned on a regular basis and it's another thing to put on your list to learn.

Looking past the dust, the first image is the best of the set. For using everything on auto and doing a mono conversion by pressing one button you have really done well. The image is well composed with good use of leading lines fading off into the fog. The trees have the right level of contrast for a foggy day. Consider a slight crop to the left to eliminate the half car which is a slight distraction.

The images with the rowers is also quite good. Once again the contrast for a foggy day is about right and the rowers stand out well. I feel it would work better if the lower half of the frame was cropped and also a bit from the left to exclude the infrastructure in the top left corner. This would leave you with a pleasing pano and plenty of negative space for the rowers to move into.

The third image is muddy with little to hold the attention. The eye searches for a subject and the closest it gets is the water on the right. Much the same with the fourth. The tree in the foreground is a good frame but the building at the base is weak as a subject. Cropping off the base, leaving the tree in a square format works better as an abstract.

Thanks for that - it's really good feedback! Looking forward to next weekend already!

Loire.

Tiriel

I love the first shot and the second shot is a great shot also. Well composed and I agree 100% with what Cabansail said above regarding crops and composition - what you have is really great and tiny tweaks can make them really strong shots. Well done!

Regarding the dust spots/dirt on the lens/sensor - if you're in Cork I think Barker Photographic do sensor cleaning, if you haven't done it yourself before and need to get it cleaned. Check first if it is the lens, but if not - be very careful and read up on it before you go anywhere near the sensor, as it is very very sensitive and easily damaged if you don't know what you're doing. I know that many here do clean their own, but I've let it to the experts and hence the dust bunnies build up in between cleans. Best thing to do is use the clone tool or the healing tool in Photoshop - or if you are only using Picasa, then there is the Retouch tool in that too which would help. Worth giving it a shot as the photographs you've capture are really great.

CabanSail

Actually it's not that fragile. You actually don't clean the sensor, what you clean is the glass filter which sits in front of the sensor. Use the same care as you would cleaning a lens and you will be OK, but get someone to show you first.

Tiriel

CabanSail wrote: »

Actually it's not that fragile. You actually don't clean the sensor, what you clean is the glass filter which sits in front of the sensor. Use the same care as you would cleaning a lens and you will be OK, but get someone to show you first.

I think if it is dirt on the sensor and there's that much of it - a professional clean is no harm

Loire

Cork_girl wrote: »

I love the first shot and the second shot is a great shot also. Well composed and I agree 100% with what Cabansail said above regarding crops and composition - what you have is really great and tiny tweaks can make them really strong shots. Well done!

Thanks! I was quite chuffed. There were lots of poor shots, but I'm OK with that. If I can get just one good one I'll be happy.

Loire.

adox

If you have an air blower, try that first and give it a good few goes before giving up on it.

I`ve had dust spots that didnt look like budging but I got rid of them eventually with persistence with the air blower.

ScumLord

I haven't cleaned my camera since I got it (yeeears ago). Now that I'm reminded of it I'm off to amazon to buy a cleaning kit.


If you want to be really cheeky you could say the spots are supposed to be there to make the shots look vintage.

Loire

ScumLord wrote: »

If you want to be really cheeky you could say the spots are supposed to be there to make the shots look vintage.

But of course! Actually, they took an inordinate amount of time :pac:

DaireQuinlan

ScumLord wrote: »

If you want to be really cheeky you could say the spots are supposed to be there to make the shots look vintage.

<pedanticism> It's actually very rare to find fungus growing on B&W negatives or old silver prints. Silver is quite a potent microbial agent so is inclined to kill off anything that tries to set up shop. Colour films are another kettle of fish though, which is one of the reasons the last bath in a colour dev process used to be some variety of formaldehyde. Nowadays it's some slightly more benign and less carcinogenic anti-fungal agent.

If it was fungus or dust on the negative though they would, of course, create white spots in the resultant prints.
</pedanticism>

Loire

OK...I've cropped these a bit further as suggested. Here goes...

Took a little off the right hand side of this one as well


First attempt at cropping away the bottom wasn't great, so left a little below the boat


Loire.

dinneenp

1st photo- really like this, very atmospheric. I'd crop out the car to the left of the furhtest tree and some of the foreground. This would make viewers focus more on the fog to the right. (which you've cropped some out of in your latest reply!
It reminds me of Maggy Morrissey's shots of Venice.

2nd photo- too much water in foreground for me. Has potential though

3rd photo- does nothing for me. the very black items by the 'waterfall' is too dark adn there's no focal point

4th photo- I see what you're trying to do but I just find the branches distracting and the building joke isn't interesting.

Loire

dinneenp wrote: »

3rd photo- does nothing for me. the very black items by the 'waterfall' is too dark adn there's no focal point

Thanks for your feedback dinneenp, much appreciated.

Regarding the 3rd photo, I was a bit disappointed with this - I was try to end up with a dramatic grey sky - it was so grey & foggy on the actual morning. The sky was the focal point in a sense. Probably I needed even less in the foreground?

Thanks again,
Loire.

CabanSail

Loire wrote: »

I was try to end up with a dramatic grey sky - it was so grey & foggy on the actual morning.

To get dramatic skies you will probably have to learn some post production techniques. They usually take a bit of editing to achieve.

cortinaG

My pics have all those spots on them too.
I know it's the sensor that needs cleaning but at the moment I just keep the aperture as low(wide) as possible, ie. F8 or less does the trick, allowing faster shutter speed. As you close the aperture (f22) the sensor is exposed for a longer time to gather the light for the image so it also picks up the specs.
All you need to do is set camera to Aperture priority (AV) set it as low as possible, camera will set shutter speed to match.
As for the pics, I think the first one is by far the most appealing to the eye, I wouldn't rate myself enough to criticize them though.