Christmas (my first submission)

[Bhuna]

Dear all,

Having introduced myself and received a warm welcome, I thought it would be time to also put a couple of pictures up to get some opinions please. I have a couple of questions at the same time and have tried to give as much information as possible.

Although I do have Photoshop Elements 11, I have not conducted any post processing on these (other than shrink them to 800 max length).

Picture 1:

10 seconds, F22, ISO 400, 70-300mm lens (119mm focal length recorded)

This was taken with me sat across the room with camera on tripod and tethered to my laptop, using laptop to control camera. Now I seen this one a couple of times now, I think its a bit "yellowy" so how would be best to tackle that?

Image1.jpg

Question - is there a way of minimising the effect of the reflection in the bauble without losing the shine - I mean at present if you zoom in you can see the wife sat on the sofa and me taking the picture - is there a way to lose that, other than kicking the wife out the living room.

Picture 2

Av - Aperture priority, 1/30, F5.6, ISO Auto (3200), 18-55mm Kit lens (focal length 49mm recorded)

Image2.jpg

Picture 3

Av - Aperture priority, 1 second, F20, ISO Auto (3200), 18-55mm kit lens (focal 49mm)

Image3.jpg

Both 2 and 3 - Tripod again, but stood up near fireplace which had the cinnamon sticks on and tree then a few feet back from that in corner of room.

Questions: 1. Whats best, the wider or smaller aperture setting for the cinamon sticks picture for the background tree? I prefer the blurrier look personally but wondered what others thought?

2. (Dumb question sorry) Is using some of the pre-programmed settings (ie Auto, AV priority, TV priority, Others - such as landscape, sports, portrait etc) considered 'cheating'? What I mean is am I cheating myself if I dont use manual settings as much as possible? My personal view is that Im learning by using the settings and also I dont want to miss out on a good picture by spending time looking at the back of the camera all the time setting up but I dont want to post pictures on here that have been done on full auto, taking credit for the settings when it was just pot luck as the camera took over (eg Av priority on the two above). (sorry only two posts and you probably can guess by now - I waffle a little).

Please be gentle but likewise please be honest - this is my first upload and I'm here to gain advice to help improve.

Many thanks in advance.


Andy.

[paul linton]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Hi Andy
Good to see you've managed to get some images online,
I'm not going to go through all your Questions but I'll do a few!.

The yellow cast to your images is because of the light(if your not shooting in daylight you need to change the white balance)two ways to solve the problem #1 change the white balance setting to Tungsten or #2 use a flash this should then give you the correct colour balance.

As for wider or smaller Aperture it all depends what your trying to achieve,but in this example the wider aperture gives a better look as it draws your eyes to the orange slice. The only downer to that is you've chopped the orange off at the bottom and also some of the Cherries at the top, so you have to work on a better composition.

Hope this makes some sense??? maybe other members can explain in a better way than me but give these a try and see how you get on.

Paul

[Muscat]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Hi Andy,

Good to see you posting images and asking questions. I will try and add some more input to your questions but may not answer all of them.

You say you have Elements 11 which you used to shrink the images to an 800px size. The first thing I would try is to open the enhance menu options and click on the auto correct options, these often do a good job at correcting the image.

If this doesn't correct the image as want you can manually change it, one of the easier ways is if you look to the RHS of the screen you should see a section called Layers with probably one inner window noted as Background, just below that there is a small band that contains a number of icons, one is a circle with the top part grey and the bottom part white this when clicked will allow you to open a new fill or adjustment layer. Click the option for 'Levels', this will open a new small window which on the LHS of it you will see 3 droppers, click on the bottom (white) dropper and then drag that to an area of the image that should be white and click on that area this will change the white balance of the image, then do the same with the top (black) dropper clicking on an area that should be black this will then give you a better Black balance. If you are not happy with the o/a rendition of the image gently move the middle slider one way or the other a little to brighten / darken the image.

Don't worry about making these changes as they are not permanent until you hit the save button, if you don't like them the simply delete the layer. If you are working in jpg format then save the adjusted file with a different name to the original that way you wont loose the master copy.

Shine and reflections are a challenge and the way that I would consider reducing some of this is to use a polarising filter but you stand a chance of degrading the 'sparkle' which is what you wanted.

If you want the cinamon sticks in sharp focus and the tree OOF then use a wide aperture something around f4 or f5.6 as I assume you are close to the cinamon sticks, if you use a small aperture i.e. f11 then more will be in focus.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with using the AV, TV or P settings as they allow you to set the ISO and either the aperture or shutter speed whilst letting the camera take care of the other variables. As you experiment and gain experience then start to use the full manual settings.

Hope this is of some use, also keep asking questions as IMHO the only daft question is the one you want to ask but don't.

[AlexR!]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Andy, welcome.
There’s a lot of questions there, but I’ll just add my two penn’orth to one of the issues for now. I’ll probably come back to some others when I have more time.
As Paul says, the yellow colour is probably down to an incorrect white balance. Yes, you can sort this out at the time of capture in-camera, or you can adjust the jpg as Muscat describes. My recommendation is to change from shooting in jpg to shooting in raw. Don’t be frightened, let me explain. In my case, I believe that changing to raw has led to the biggest single improvement in my photography in the past year. Not because my post-processing is any better than the defaults, but the very fact that I am presented with, and can tinker with, a wider range of simple adjustments has increased my own understanding and confidence in what I can achieve.
In the specific case of white balance, when you open up a raw (i.e. .cr2) file in PSE 11 (which is what I use too) you are automatically taken into Adobe Camera Raw and you are presented with a pull down list of all of the white balance settings on your camera. By clicking on each in turn you can instantly see the effect of each, and simply choose the one you like best. This means you can leave your camera on ‘auto white balance’ and it is one less thing to worry about in the field.
Then as your confidence grows, you can fiddle with all the other stuff. Have fun.
Hope that helps.

[Bhuna]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Thanks all for the comments. I will have a more in depth look through them later when I finish work but I see what you are saying and an looking forward to correcting my rookie errors.

I had already read and set my camera to shoot in Raw + JPG so will have a look.

Thanks again. I'm learning so much.

Andy

[AlexR!]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Andy, ok, a couple more thoughts. Personally I much prefer 2 to 3, as the in focus background distracts from the main focus of the shot instead of adding. Paul is right about cutting in too tight.
My only suggestion about the reflections is to minimise them as much as you can in camera (in this case it means only have one highly reflective bauble, and moving the family and furniture out), and try to clone stamp the major remaining ones out in pp.
Lastly, I do not consider Av or Tv cheating at all. I use them pretty well exclusively. And on occasion I'll also use full auto if I don't have time to think and just want to grab a shot that I can sure will be halfway decent. Then I'll come off that and onto a more creative mode. One thing I never use, which you have done, is auto ISO, though, due to worries about noise. I tend to just leave it on ISO 200 unless I really have to up it. We are all different though, and don't treat anything I've said as correct.

[Riggers]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Welcome to the forum Bhuna.

As others have said RAW is the way to go. I did it right from the off with my first DSLR and would never shoot jpeg except for the odd occassion I need to handover / upload a pic instantly. Also if you plan on sticking with it I recommend investing in Adobe Lightroom as this makes it really easy (compared to ps) to post process and manage your photos.

[Bhuna]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Alex,

Again thank you - I've just sat down for the evening after a busy day, so will give the feedback a thorough read through to fully understand it (although some of it I already do realise exactly what you all mean - annoying me really as its things I should have thought about - still getting that "checklist" in my mind of things before taking a photo LOL).

Re the Auto ISO - I have read the same comment somewhere else and am experimenting now with the range of ISO rather than Auto.

Would the same apply with the White Balance ? Is it best to pick the best setting for the photo or leave that on AWB (auto). From what I understand (right or wrongly), that doesnt matter as I can always then re-select it if I have shot in RAW and it applies the white balance "mode" then (eg within Photoshop).

Thanks again all. If I get time tonight Im moving a few things around - even kicking the wife out the lounge and setting up the tripod again for another practice run.

Andy.

[Muscat]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Unless I am doing a special shoot where I use a colour passport to set a dedicated white balance and colour profile I normally leave the camera set on AWB and adjust later as I shoot in RAW.

[AndyA]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Hi Andy, well done for posting your first set of images. I'm sure you'll get lots of enjoyment from your camera.

I've been enjoying photography for around 2 years now ... well, I've enjoyed most of it ... and occasionally I've felt inclined to chuck my camera in the bin! There's always something to learn and that's what keeps me interested.

I mainly shoot landscapes and I almost always use AWB and AV mode. I also use jpeg + RAW, the jpeg allows me to view the shots quickly on my PC and RAW allow so much room for editing. Please do try and use RAW!

[Bhuna]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Thanks.

Unfortunately didnt get time tonight to set my tripod up but I have spent a good hour (its surprising how quick time flies) messing about with the RAW image (taken a copy) of the baubles above and in particular the adobe camera raw part to elements - moving each slider and seeing the difference it makes and also the different white balance settings. its surprising how much it changes a pictures look so i think im going to have a few tutorials on photoshop as well planned.

Andy.

[Muscat]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Andy, I learnt how to use photoshop mainly by using the online tutorials that are out there, there are loads of free videos etc. on Youtube simply think of something you want to do and enter it into the search engine.

[Riggers]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Thanks.

Unfortunately didnt get time tonight to set my tripod up but I have spent a good hour (its surprising how quick time flies) messing about with the RAW image (taken a copy) of the baubles above and in particular the adobe camera raw part to elements - moving each slider and seeing the difference it makes and also the different white balance settings. its surprising how much it changes a pictures look so i think im going to have a few tutorials on photoshop as well planned.

Andy.

That's the beauty of Lightroom Andy, you don't need to take a copy of your raw files because all changes you make are completely non-destructive. You can roll any part of it or all of it back at any point and none of the changes are saved in your raw file - they are all just part of the lightroom database. Then when you like what you see you can tell Lightroom to spit out a jpeg and your raw file is still there just as it was when it came out of your camera.

[Bhuna]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

Andy, I learnt how to use photoshop mainly by using the online tutorials that are out there, there are loads of free videos etc. on Youtube simply think of something you want to do and enter it into the search engine.

Thanks. I meant online tutorials as Im on a budget - according to my wife my budget is £0, however I have managed to make that stretch to the 1100D with the two lenses, Photoshop, Giotto tripod and ball head, extra battery, 64gb memory card, remote switch, and magazine subscriptions (including one with a monopod gift), and Im hoping it will stretch to a Canon 50mm 1.8 as well, but the wifes getting a bit suspicious Ive gone over her idea of my budget for this :).

That's the beauty of Lightroom Andy, you don't need to take a copy of your raw files because all changes you make are completely non-destructive. You can roll any part of it or all of it back at any point and none of the changes are saved in your raw file - they are all just part of the lightroom database. Then when you like what you see you can tell Lightroom to spit out a jpeg and your raw file is still there just as it was when it came out of your camera.

This does sound very good and I think I will add it to the list of things to purchase with my 2014 budget of £0 on photography :). At present, I get in the habit of downloading the files onto my laptop, which then I copy those across to a network storage drive that has my photos and music on - this in turn backs itself up to another network storage drive. So I then get to play around with any file that is on the laptop without the worry about losing an original copy anyway.

Thanks.

Andy.

[DeeGee]

Re: Christmas (my first submission)

If you want some software that goes a little bit further than the DPP on the Camera's disc. You could try down loading GIMP. It's completely free. Will clone, colour pop, selective blur/sharpen etc, etc.

It has scripts that you can down load and you can also find tutorials on Youtube. I know its not Photoshop or Light room, but if you're working on a budget of 0. It ain't bad.