Doesnt Pop like i thought it would :(

[Rath79]

Het guys,

saw this white fire hydrant stand out against the bright red back ground and thought man that'll be a nice shot, however once i took the photo it didnt quite have the wow factor i thought it would, could i have improved it??



Exif

Camera Canon EOS 50D
Exposure 1/8000 sec
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 135 mm
ISO Speed 800
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Date and Time (Modified) 2011:03:31 08:01:22
Exposure Program Aperture-priority AE
Max Aperture Value 5.7
Metering Mode Spot
Exposure Mode Auto
White Balance Manual
Lens EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Approximate Focus Distance 2.52

[Mike367]

Don't know about Canon. but Nikon has a setting of "Vivid" which increases saturation of primary colors. It can easily be applied to the raw file in post if you didn't do it when you took the shot. You can also increase the saturation of reds and adjust the curves in Photoshop.

Other than that, I have nothing.

[Rath79]

see this is where i fall down i have no idea how to use the post software

Have had a go doing what you said and the result can be seen on my flickr page


IMG_3398-Edit.jpg | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

does this look better??

[zona5101]

yup, a little tweek on the color to get the white "white" then a curves adjustment to punch up the contrast should help.

[dlambert]

You might find that contrast & sharpening adjustments would help the details of the hydrant and the texture of the wall stand out a bit, too.

[corvus2606]

I think part of the problem is that you focussed on the wall and not on the hydrant. tighter aperture would have helped you get both in focus, but the soft edges on the hydrand just seem to stop it from popping off the page

[afoord82]

you can also boost up the vibrancy in photoshop

[SwissJon]

And you would have done better to get lower down. Things look more imposing when you look up at them, and are weakened when viewed from above.. (It's all to do with out ego I'm told!)

Anyway, if you could have got down so you were viewing theis from it's own height or below, that would have altered the composition greatly.

Also, bothe the wall and the hydrant are wonky.. you need at least one thing straight, or choose much greater angles to make it look deliberate. Small angles like this just annoy your eye and the composition just ends up looking wrong.

You should have moved much closer and opened the Aperture up.. Your lens goes to F3.5 at the shortest end, you'd have got some lovely blur if you'd snapped it at 18mm from much closer, with the added benifit of the wider angle lens increasing the perceived distance to the wall, making the whole thing more imposing as a subject. It's also a little small for my tast, I'd like to have seen it take a much larger proportion of the frame.

Finally, I think I'd have considered snapping this at a different time of day. Everyone is going on about white balance and popping colours, and that's all fair enough, but it's much better to do this kind of thing naturally. If you'd taken this in the evening light, the golden light of sunset would have really enhanced that red wall, and pushed out the blues in the white hydrant..

Oh, and one final thing.. Take your camera out of auto-ISO mode. It absolutely amazes me how many people leave their camera's in Auto mode, take photos at incredibly fast speeds unnecesarily, and reduce the image quality as a result.. You're at 800 ISO snapping ato the maximum shutter speed your camera can manage, you really can't expect to get the most accurate exposures when you push the camera to its limit.. Drop down to 100 ISO and your shutter speed should drop to 1/1000, more than enough to grab a still life at any focal length you have available..

[Rath79]

Originally Posted by SwissJon

Oh, and one final thing.. Take your camera out of auto-ISO mode. It absolutely amazes me how many people leave their camera's in Auto mode, take photos at incredibly fast speeds unnecesarily, and reduce the image quality as a result.. You're at 800 ISO snapping ato the maximum shutter speed your camera can manage, you really can't expect to get the most accurate exposures when you push the camera to its limit.. Drop down to 100 ISO and your shutter speed should drop to 1/1000, more than enough to grab a still life at any focal length you have available..

I noticed when i posted my exif data i had it on iso 800. i had been shooting indoor all day and just forgot to change the iso obviously when i shot this. I do use Manual ISO but because i haven't had the camera long i always forget to adjust ISO settings.


Thanks for the feedback tho on actually making the shot better in the camera as i feel i should be trying to get it right when i take it rather than fixing errors in post given that my PS knowledge is sadly lacking.

[Sterling]

Originally Posted by zona5101

yup, a little tweek on the color to get the white "white" then a curves adjustment to punch up the contrast should help.

I think Bruce hit the nail on the head. When you viewed the scene I'm sure you saw a bright white hydrant against a bright red wall. However, in the photo the white hydrant is actually quite bluish (the half in shadow is really blue) due to the reflection of the sky and the bright red wall is actually a darker red than it probably seemed in the sun (also affected by a lot of blue sky reflecting onto it). The brain can filter out the effects of that blue sky reflection but the camera cannot.

The result is that instead of the strong contrast between bright white and bright red, the shot is a bluish white against dark red - not nearly as striking.

This is a very good case for using post-processing to restore a photo back to the way it looked to your eye. As Bruce said, turning the bluish white back to white and then perhaps adjusting the brightness and hue of the wall would probably go a long way.

It will take someone more skilled than me to tell you how to achieve the same things in camera but getting an accurate white balance would probably be a start.