Request for criticism (rfc)

joolsveer

Please see attached holiday photos taken with my new Canon 350 D and the kit lens. I would value any comments you wish to make.

JackKelly

wow.nice photos. Great subject in all of them. They seem to be a little soft though. Maybe it's just the kit lens.

derek27

vibrant!

DotOrg

TimAy wrote:

They seem to be a little soft though. Maybe it's just the kit lens.

i'd say most were taken at least above f5.6 and there's very little difference between the kit lens and L lenses in those conditions. they would, as all shots from dSLR's do, need a little tweaking with unsharp mask in PS

for me, the shots are all fairly bland, nothing jumps out and makes me go wow in any of them. they're better than the average holiday snapshot but nothing i'd want to hang on my wall. just my opinion

for some critical opinions on photo's i'd use photo.net if you want honest opinions and reflections on your photos. you'll learn a lot there for example on how to improve

Shrimp

i cant say i like the photos. The only one that really caught my eye in any way was the last one of the bridge. Altho I would remove the branch in the top right hand corner, make better balance.

I also find that alot of those photos were to close to the subject. Not enough negative space around the subjects.

Keep snapping tho.

rymus

Are they all a tad overexposed or is it just me? Maybe I'm just too used to shooting underexposed by a couple of stops... A little more shadow/contrast would be nice.

smileygal

Here's a mix of positive and negative:

Knight one is a cut above the rest!
Great action shot and lots of detail and interest.

I would crop that branch in bridge no 2 and the sign on the right in bridge 1.

Motorbike one does nothing for me..

I also find them under exposed except for knight.

cecilwinthorpe

i like them all the only thing that i would do is chop the edge off the last one to get rid of the branch in the top corner. it was the first thing that caught my eye

Metacortex

The second image has potential, the moto image.
You really need to get that into PS to do the usualy post processing to bring out the details and the colours.
The rest don't really do anything for me

joolsveer

Thanks for the feedback. I will try to post some more images at the weekend.

joolsveer

Some more pickies from Languedoc for your views

waldo

Looking at the shadows in the photos, most of the photos seem to be taken between 11am and 4pm - a time when the light is at its harshest and most unflattering (to every subject). During this time colours tend to look washed out (see the sky of the statue) and lifeless. The same photos in evening or morning light might be much better.

smileygal

Queen is best of the batch. Cat one looks blurred and wall more noticeable than cat. McDonalds as a subject does nothing for me. Serpent railing is an interesting unusual find. If you can somehow get rid of the cars it would be better.

JMcL

DotOrg wrote:

i'd say most were taken at least above f5.6 and there's very little difference between the kit lens and L lenses in those conditions. they would, as all shots from dSLR's do, need a little tweaking with unsharp mask in PS

To get the best out of the kit lens, you need to stop down to f8 to f11. Wide open it'll be soft.

As regards the pics, I'd agree with another poster WRT trying to avoid shooting in midday. You said these were from the Languedoc, the midday light down there is REALLY harsh. A polarizer would probably help a lot by cutting down the reflections from foliage etc, and improving saturation.

The railings shot would benefit from a larger aperture to get smaller depth of field to throw the background out of focus. As it is, the detail just gets lost against a distracting background.

John

Zombrex

You seem to be taking a lot of your pictures from a head on. "default", position, which makes them kinda bland. It is just like standing infront of something, so what ever you are presenting is just going to look rather ordinary.

Next time, try and move around the subject a bit more, try and take shots using interesting angles and interesting compositions .. one idea is to try taking shots of something in the foreground with a far away background to give good feeling of depth. It is easier to focus the attendion of the view that way, especially if you use a small aperature (say f/5) and focus on a foreground object as the background blurs.

You want to draw the view around your photo, from one object to the next.

joolsveer

smileygal wrote:

Queen is best of the batch. Cat one looks blurred and wall more noticeable than cat. McDonalds as a subject does nothing for me. Serpent railing is an interesting unusual find. If you can somehow get rid of the cars it would be better.

Thanks for the feedback. I agree about the cat one BTW. The subject of the McDonalds shot is the girl, guy and dog. I particularly like the way the girl seems to be pointing at the fast food joint.

joolsveer

Here are a few more shots for your comments.
I have taken Dotorg's advice and placed some of my recent output on the photo.net site.

joolsveer

Anyone for a MacFlurry? This is what I meant above.