Sunday at a lake close to my flat

[[malamoucha]]

HI All,
feedback time. No PP pls














last pic my daughter's waiting for lunch
M

[[Geoff Slocock]]

Hi Martin,

Those are generally pleasing photos, aren't they?

As i've mentioned before, photographing using a digital sensor is bedevilled by a relative lack of useful dynamic range; and it is only with post processing methods and light underexposure, at time of shooting, that you can get close to a good result, most of the time. Blown highlights can never be recovered but dark or areas in shadow can fairly easily be enhanced.

Everything else, though, is most serviceable in these shots. And it is only the water feature shots where you have blown highlights away, a little. I feel a bit dreadful saying this because when I started I was told this sort of stuff; and yet truly it is not so easy to avoid blowing highlights away; and also there are some styles of shooting where it produces a good result to blow highlights away. So there are in fact no hard and fast rules on this subject.

The back lighted shot of the girls (with the sun behind them) has come out "properly" because their faces and table and beer is all nicely exposed. So that is an example of where the curtains and windows are over exposed and that does not matter, in the slightest. So no prudish talk about blown away highlights, here. The view over the lake is also in my view correctly exposed.

All of those first three shots are close to being properly exposed. But it is not so generally good to have a lot of your picture coming out white. So what one would try to do is expose those shots slightly less, so as to get some more variation of tones in your picture.

Another skill which I found very hard to get to grips with is what is sometimes called "chimping" your shot after you've taken it. You look at the lcd display and flick backwards and forwards through the histogram and and the display showing you heavy shadow and highlights. And then make a decision on whether to retake it or not.

This I guess is the hard road to avoid having undesirable areas of the shot whited out. But as I said, at the start, it is mostly the nature and properties of the digital sensor that gives these headaches. Exposure bracketing is another technique and that is used, mostly when you only have one chance at a shot. Your camera does do RAW as well; and that effectively enables you to play with camera settings in a sort of "virtual" sense.

BTW. I know you said no PP, but some of those shots could come out quite nicely with some PP. Also, you can never get the camera set for bang on perfection; so I think finishing with PP is somewhat inevitable.

[[malamoucha]]

HI Geoff,
thanks for the feedback. I agree that doing some PP. does help. But I was aiming for this effect from the running water. But I do agree I need to work with PP to get better result. I think the lake shot with the tree stump needs some work too. If I had more time to keep an eye on my shots than more girls, I think I would have played a bit more with Exposure bracketing.
I plan to go back this coming weekend if weather allowing. I have a free weekend (meaning no kids}
Once again thanks for your feedback.
M

[[Geoff Slocock]]

In my own experience, Martin, I could not at first believe that this detailed stuff of going back and re-shooting and careful examination of taken shots should be necessary... I used to get fairly sound results when I did film photography, after all!

So, why I thought, was all this fuss necessary? But it is actually very much down to relative lack of available dynamic range. But the plus side is of course that there is no cost overhead in taking experimental shots. The need for post processing hit me as a surprise, at first.

Also I often come home with two or three different exposure-versions of the same shot (by manually playing with the aperture or shutter speed). So it takes me extra time to pick and choose and tweak... not at all like film photography used to be, eh?

[[malamoucha]]

(10-01-2012 08:44 AM)Geoff Slocock Wrote:  In my own experience, Martin, I could not at first believe that this detailed stuff of going back and re-shooting and careful examination of taken shots should be necessary... I used to get fairly sound results when I did film photography, after all!

So, why I thought, was all this fuss necessary? But it is actually very much down to relative lack of available dynamic range. But the plus side is of course that there is no cost overhead in taking experimental shots. The need for post processing hit me as a surprise, at first.

Also I often come home with two or three different exposure-versions of the same shot (by manually playing with the aperture or shutter speed). So it takes me extra time to pick and choose and tweak... not at all like film photography used to be, eh?

I agree 100%.
I hope I get some more time for myself to play around. Well I am off to work. Have a wonderful day
Cheers

[[Geoff Slocock]]

THe tree stump shots is sound in my opinion. Some "tone mapping" would bring out the detail nicely.

[[Geoff Slocock]]

I've been looking around for images on the web where overexposure is felt to be justified.

http://flickr.com/photos/10211031@N03/1485196657/

http://digital-photography-school.com/wp...ea-o-3.jpg

http://flickr.com/photos/johnworthington/2625742173/

I guess the main way one can justify if is your main subject is clearly exposed and the other detail actually benefits form being made less clear.

In this case it is used however to produce an almost abstract effect.

http://flickr.com/photos/melodygates/1431494468/

I was almost caught on the hop in the earlier discussion. I did say there are no hard and fast rules... and there aren't. This can disconcerting I know, because having hard and fast rules can make life simpler.

Another example where over exposure seems to work in my opinion is in LeeBone's comp entry. Here a lot of the plumage detail has been lost but this is an impressionistic work, and is not real life.



Providing critical comment can be hard because one is always at risk of making matters more complicated than needs be. And indeed I used to argue with some of the critiques of the shots that I made, saying that blown away detail didn't matter.

But none of this a science, and is an art; and the debate has to be weighed a bit carefully.

What I will think about doing now is writing this post up for putting into another part of the forum. I kind of think it might have been better not to go into this depth for answering this query. But I can be better prepared for the next time.

Going back to your water feature shots, it can also be said, Martin, that is best to include significant dark areas in a shot. You see the flowing water is just not going to have any texture to it, so it rather needs to be set off by dark areas of some some sort.

Now as I say this, I have my doubts, because there are always exceptions to such a generality. And I am not that widely experienced that I can be sure, either.