photography examples and learning

Mr Anderson, I like both of those pics, very interesting and well-framed. I'm personally not a fan of post processing, so your two images as they are, although I agree the mods Boot made do add something, I think they were perfectly good enough beforehand

Originally Posted by carty

Mr Anderson, I like both of those pics, very interesting and well-framed. I'm personally not a fan of post processing, so your two images as they are, although I agree the mods Boot made do add something, I think they were perfectly good enough beforehand

Yes, they were, I'm simply trying to assist with learning. I do not mean to offend, and am not implying there was anything wrong with the pictures, I'm just trying to show where they can be enhanced.

Post processing is developing. Before the advent of digital, many of the adjustments you now make in the digital darkroom, would have been considerations before the event, such as film type, film speed, and with black and white especially, with filters, on top of the work carried out in the darkroom after. The developing process is now, to say the least, a lot less messy. There was still plenty of work done with dodging and burning ('tis where the tools got their names) and the rest, to get images how the photographer wanted the final print.

Originally Posted by mr.anderson

Here are a couple of B&W shots from today. Again, a subject that I know very little about - what do you think of my first efforts?

Brilliant, I love the first shot, like boot said it speaks, it tells a story, and lets your imagination run free. Very good.

They were both taken at ISO 3200 in an attempt to create a bit of noise, especially for the 2nd one, but that didn't seem to be as strong as I had imagined it would.

Digital noise isn't as visible in black and white shots as in colour shots. Digital sensor or preamp noise has two components, chroma and luminance. Simplifying it a bit, chroma noise is "random" colour variation from pixel to pixel in the picture, while luminance is tone variation from pixel to pixel (there was an example of this in a "noisy" sky in a picture earlier on in the thread).
Of these, chroma noise is the most objectionable and can usually be found in the shadow areas of the pictures (less information there). Luminance noise will usually be found in big smooth areas like the sky.

Now if you keep in mind that the D90 sensor is rather well behaved where noise is concerned (I believe it's still considered the best 1.5x crop sensor in the market together with the D300 / D300s / D5000), especially in the luminance side of things, and that you've effectively tossed away your chroma noise by converting your pics to B&W, you'll easily undertand why you didn't get the "film grain" effect you were looking for.

On the other hand, boot is absolutely right:

Originally Posted by boot

For noise, the creativity of a high ISO film for black and white, cannot be reproduced with digital. With digital, you're best aways attempting to shoot with the lowest ISO the you can, and adding the film noise in the digital darkroom, where you have a lot more control over it, and will be able to reproduce with practise, very convincing 'film noise'.

Lightroom 3.0 is adding a "film grain" feature that actually looks very good from what I've seen in the little time I've spent playing with it. I still shoot real B&W film every now and again, both 125 and 400 ASA (Ilford FP4 and HP5), and I really liked what I saw in Lightroom.

Understanding the histogram and what it tells you, irrespective of whether your shooting for black and white or colour, is an important part of digital photography.

Here, here, the man speaks sense. Learn how to read a histogram, learn the limitations of the in-camera one (especially if you shoot raw) and you're on your way to digital exposure nirvana.

Originally Posted by carty

Mr Anderson, I like both of those pics, very interesting and well-framed. I'm personally not a fan of post processing, so your two images as they are, although I agree the mods Boot made do add something, I think they were perfectly good enough beforehand

Originally Posted by boot

Yes, they were, I'm simply trying to assist with learning. I do not mean to offend, and am not implying there was anything wrong with the pictures, I'm just trying to show where they can be enhanced.

Post processing is developing. Before the advent of digital, many of the adjustments you now make in the digital darkroom, would have been considerations before the event, such as film type, film speed, and with black and white especially, with filters, on top of the work carried out in the darkroom after. The developing process is now, to say the least, a lot less messy. There was still plenty of work done with dodging and burning ('tis where the tools got their names) and the rest, to get images how the photographer wanted the final print.

A "quick" read of "The Print" by Ansel Adams would be very useful to people who think that there was no post-processing done in the "old days"... there was a lot of it. The amount of stuff that can be done to enhance a photo taken on film is nothing short of amazing.
What's more, the digital camera itself is already post-processing the files right after you press the shutter button, before you take them into the computer.
Nikon's "Picture Control" system is brilliant (I believe Canon has something similar, but I've never used it), where it allows the user to fully customise the picture processing parameters, including hue, saturation, contrast (with custom curves, if need be) and sharpness in camera. What this means is that an experienced user can actually program the camera to do the post-processing itself and save custom processing options for any given situation they come across before even getting the pictures into the computer.
I prefer shooting raw files, with custom picture controls that will show my images on-camera to be as flat as possible (within reason) so I can take a look at my histogram and see where I stand exposure wise. This allows me to get home, import pictures into lightroom and take it from there, "developing" them into my vision of what was there when I took the shots.
Is this wrong? Ansel Adams didn't think so.
Obviously, getting it as close to the end result as possible on camera is always preferrable, but not always do-able.

Originally Posted by mr.anderson

Cool, thanks - will do some free trials over the coming weeks.

Thanks for your advice all.

Give the Nikon stuff a try too. ViewNX (freeware!) and CaptureNX have very awkward user interfaces (read: cr@p), but ViewNX will allow you to take a raw file and play with it by processing it as if you were doing it in camera, with all the original settings (saves you some time and shutter cycles when you want to find out what the heck are all the Portrait / Landscape / Vivid settings all about, or even program some custom curves), and CaptureNX is an extremely powerful editor that only suffers from the really bad interface.
If nothing else, ViewNX will allow you to shoot only raw files, then get home, import all your pics into it and export them back to jpg as the camera would have done in the first place if you think you don't need to do anything else to them.

Mmm I like those a lot mr.a
and Boot's slightly enhanced versions even more so.

[Richie]

had a go at cropping from that one that was too busy...



adjusted some setting in Lightroom.

I like that Richie

Maybe even a crop putting the birds slightly to the right of the frame would work too - gives them somewhere to fly to.

[anna]

Mr Anderson, love those pictures fantastic!!

You may also if you have time go visit this ...
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-.../wpy/index.jsp

and for us mere mortals check out the winners of the junior competition

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-...oup.do?group=2

and then cry at all the lovely toys 10 year olds have to play with these days!!!

If I could be half that good.

Originally Posted by anna

and then cry at all the lovely toys 10 year olds have to play with these days!!!

If I could be half that good.

Patience, young grasshopper!
Patience and practice!

[mr.anderson]

Right guys n gals, I have been doing a little messing around with Lightroom and Nikon Capture NX.

Here is the a before and after - keeping in mind that I really know very little about colours, balance, saturation etc.

Before:



After:




Filipe, you're spot on about Capture NX - it is impossible to use.

Lightroom is comparatively very easy to use and very intuitive. A very nicely written piece of software.

So, have I got this photo looking better?

Originally Posted by mr.anderson

Filipe, you're spot on about Capture NX - it is impossible to use.

Which is a shame, because the Colour Control Points feature is pure genius. Now they just need to hire someone with two brain cells to redesign the interface.

Lightroom is comparatively very easy to use and very intuitive. A very nicely written piece of software.

I love the thing, you've got pretty much everything you need right there, if they take the time to add the features it still lacks (like soft proofing ), I'll give it 10 stars rating.

So, have I got this photo looking better?

To my eyes, yes!