Night Shot

[svenblom]

Hey all,

i am new with SLR shooting, but I am learning fast. I would love to get some replies on my personal favourite shots:






All pictures can be found on:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/svenmoniek/

Thanks! Sven

[Saralonde]

Hi Sven, glad to have you join us. I'll give you some of my opinions.

First image-You held this nice and steady for a slow shutter speed. Did you use a tripod? It looks nice and sharp and your dof is good. Compositionally it is missing something. If the visual focal point of this shot are the trail of lights, they don't stand out very well. When I first looked at this shot I didn't even notice them, thought they were lines in the road. Perhaps a different perspective or angle would help highlight them.

Second image-What a cute capture! I can see why you like this. Since you took this from such a distance it is hard to control the light on the ducks and they are a little dark. Do you know what time of day you took it? Your Spring 6 image on flickr was taken at the same focal length, but the ducks show up much better.

Third image-What lovely wings. Your dof is nice on this shot, too.

Fourth image-Nice action, but somewhat blown out. Is this field hockey? I'm not sure what your settings are on this shot, but perhaps your ISO was set too high. You could also help correct for too bright conditions by adjusting the exposure compensation on your camera. Generally, centering your subject does not help your composition. Could you crop it so there is a little less bright foreground and perhaps a littl off one side? That may help tell the story of this shot better.

[svenblom]

Originally Posted by Saralonde

Hi Sven, glad to have you join us. I'll give you some of my opinions.

First image-You held this nice and steady for a slow shutter speed. Did you use a tripod? It looks nice and sharp and your dof is good. Compositionally it is missing something. If the visual focal point of this shot are the trail of lights, they don't stand out very well. When I first looked at this shot I didn't even notice them, thought they were lines in the road. Perhaps a different perspective or angle would help highlight them.

Second image-What a cute capture! I can see why you like this. Since you took this from such a distance it is hard to control the light on the ducks and they are a little dark. Do you know what time of day you took it? Your Spring 6 image on flickr was taken at the same focal length, but the ducks show up much better.

Third image-What lovely wings. Your dof is nice on this shot, too.

Fourth image-Nice action, but somewhat blown out. Is this field hockey? I'm not sure what your settings are on this shot, but perhaps your ISO was set too high. You could also help correct for too bright conditions by adjusting the exposure compensation on your camera. Generally, centering your subject does not help your composition. Could you crop it so there is a little less bright foreground and perhaps a littl off one side? That may help tell the story of this shot better.

thanks for the comments! Really learning now!

1: yes, i used a tripod. As soon as the weather allows me, i will redo the shot with some other compositions.

2: the picture was taken during the day, but the light was somewhat diffused by trees etc. Even tough it is somewhat dark, i love the way the water splashes up...

3: thanks...but what is dof?

4: i re-editted the shot:

problem is the sharpness of the shot i think. The problem was the reflexion of the field on this sunny day. Some where even with a low iso and fast shutter overexposed. Maybe i should use a filter or something...
And yes, this is fieldhockey...more can be found on http://www.flickr.com/photos/svenmon...7600042352217/

greets Sven

[Tiberius]

DoF is Depth of field. it refers to how objects in front of and behind the subject are out of focus. The depth of field can be altered by adjusting the aperture. A wide aperture (low f stop number) will make the background very out of focus, and a small aperture (high f stop number) will make the background more focussed.

I've written a tutorial about it (and some other things) which you can find HERE.

[kunaldaswani]

Its looks much better after the crop but still blown out. I just reduced the levels a bit and sharpened it a little.

[knickers71uk]

that was a very interesting read tiberius, I am getting there myself with this but still find it hard to get round my head sometimes. Your little read was very well explained.

Sven I do love the first shot, I havent yet had a go at this type of photography, i thought you did a good job.

[JJthethird]

I really like the shot of the crow/raven, it shows the feathers beautifully!

John.

[Saralonde]

Here are some more explainations about depth of field:
http://digital-photography-school.co...igital-photos/
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/aperture/

[svenblom]

i know about depth of field, just didnt get the abriviation DOF
Thanks for the comments! More are welcome!

[thekevinmonster]

Svenblom:

(warning: I am such an amateur...)

The long exposure looks like it needs the top of the image chopped off. The dark area isn't really interesting, since the majority of the picture is much brighter. The car trails seem to be the real 'interesting' bit to me, and you'd want as much attention drawn to them as possible.

The duck and the bird shots are both great. I think they could both use a little bit more light, but it looks like the light is coming from the far side of the scene so the visible areas are all shadowed. I don't really know how to fix that kind of thing.

The sports shot is also great, although it's obviously blown out at the bottom. I'm not sure what you could do to fix that unless you went in and manually uh... dodged? the ground. I've noticed that in full sunlight, it's really hard to tame things like pavement and reflective ground without turning the darker areas into mud. The cropped version definitely helps bring all the attention to the action though.

One thing you might want to try is crop the image with the bottom of the frame right up against the players' feet. That would minimize as much of the way-too-bright ground.

Another comment... when I take pictures that are really high contrast, or have blown out or completely black areas, I often end up changing to a black and white shot. To me, a light blowout looks much better in black and white, as long as the contrast is up high enough. You lose whatever detail there was in the blown out area, though. It doesn't look 'realistic', it tends to be very arty, but it's another thing to try. I'd try editing your pic but I'm at work...