Feedback, Critique and suggestions please - 2

[dineshscbs]

Hi there,

I am relatively new to the community and have not posted anything for a while. However, over the last couple of months I have been doing a lot of reading and taking lots and lots of photos, majority of them as self-learning exercise. Until 4 months ago, I was mainly using P mode but now I am trying to switch to manual mode for all my photos. However, it has not been easy as I keep making many mistakes.

My objective is to get it as right as possible in-camera and I know that I can get close to my objective only by making mistakes and understanding what I did wrong or what I did right. So I need help from you and will sincerely appreciate feedback, critique and suggestions on a couple of photos I will be posting here over the next couple of days.

Here is the second one:


The EXIF data is:

Camera Model Canon EOS 40D
Shooting Date/Time 10/07/2011 4:08:59 PM
Shooting Mode Manual Exposure
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/13
Av( Aperture Value ) 22.0
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
ISO Speed 100
Lens EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
Focal Length 18.0mm
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode One-Shot AF
Picture Style Standard
Long exposure noise reduction 1:Auto
High ISO speed noise reduction 1:On
Highlight tone priority 0isable
Drive Mode Single shooting

Once again I am looking for feedback and suggestions to improve exposure, sharpness and composition.

I have adjusted the WB to Daylight and Picture Style to Landscape. The rest is without adjustment.

My objective was to take a Landscape style photo using a wide angle lens. It was taken from the balcony of a friend’s house (not my house unfortunately!).

I did not have the time to wait till the sun goes down further. So the lighting I found was not that easy to manage. Have I got the exposure right? How could I have got it more right?

What about the sharpness? I used wide angle lens at 18 mm here and used manual focal point selection at one of the trees in the foreground about 10m away. I wanted to get extensive DOF using f/22. Have I got the sharpness right? What could I have done to improve it?

What about the composition? I did not have a lot of choice here in a sense. There is no specific point of interest as such. Again what could I have done?

Many thanks.

The Raw image can be downloaded from:

http://www.supplychainbusinesssoluti...o/_MG_7007.zip

[ktuli]

Dinesh,

First, you might want to consider posting these in the Nature & Architecture area as some folks may miss them here (I know some folks don't frequent all areas of the forums) and you'd be missing out on other valuable opinions that way.

My comments here are going to be shorter than last time (need to get some work done before I get in trouble! )

The biggest things I see here are...

1. Your horizon is not level. This is something you really need to keep an eye on when landscape photography - especially when water is involved! You can look into buying a hot-shoe spirit level to help with this.

2. The railing in the bottom right is very distracting, and unfortunately based on the angle and where it is, can't really be cropped out.

3. The exposure is ok, except for the large dark shadow in the foreground. Perhaps zooming in a bit to eliminate the railing would have solved that too?

Keep at it!

- Bill

[Geoff F]

I would have tackled this scene differently, Dinesh.

Firstly I wouldn't have used a wide angled lens here. For me, there is nothing of interest in the right hand side of this image.

Secondly, I wouldn't have used F22 which has given you a long exposure on a scene where you are liable to get some subject movement (boats and wind movement of foliage). Probably F11 would have sufficed for depth of field. Most lenses are a bit soft at the extreme ends of aperture.

Probably, I would have shot with the Av setting and used a little bit of negative exposure compensation to allow for possible over exposure of white boats. Alternatively, I would spot meter, in Av mode, on the white areas then switch to manual and use the metered settings as a guide.

I don't have any of the other 'fancy' settings options. Or if I do, I have never looked for them.

And finally, with regard to editing this photo. As Bill said, the horizon needs leveling and something needs to be done to the railing and dark area at the bottom.

Personally, as I said, the right hand side holds no interest for me so I would simply crop away the railing and a similar amount of the bottom.

Alternatively, if you want to keep the tree, I would consider changing the image size ratio and crop to something like 2 x 1 ratio which would remove the shadow problem and most of the railing. What remains could be cloned out.

The sky adds little to the overall scene (except for an unwanted dust spot) so I might even consider cropping away some of it, if that makes a better balance.

One other thing. The left hand sea is rather dark and the sea in general seems excessively blue to me.

I would brighten it a little by using an Adjustment Layer plus mask then editing the mask to remove any resulting over exposure to the white areas and sky. I get quite a lot of excessive blue water problems but usually find that I can reduce the effect with careful use of Curves.

What I do is to work on just the blue channel and slightly reduce the shadows. But only a very small adjustment is necessary.

However, none of this is a criticism of your basic shooting exposure. It is part of the normal editing procedure when faced with a scene that includes shadows and white areas. You did the right thing by exposing for the spot highlights. The shadows can be recovered during editing.

[dineshscbs]

Thank you Bill and Geoff for your constructive comments.

I have added a thread in the Nature and Architecture area with a landscape photo taken with a telephoto lens.

Please keep feedback, critique and suggestions coming. I can take any criticism that will help me improve my photography skills. I am at work now and will respond with more specific things in our evening time.

Dinesh

[rpcrowe]

One thing that I would like to mention. Often when we are shooting with a wide lens, we don't notice the thingies that creep into the frame such as the rail on the bottom. I will, given a modicum of time, look around the edges of my frame to ensure I have not included anything that I did not want to photograph.

[ktuli]

The problem that Richard discusses is actually exacerbated by the fact that often times, DSLR view finders are not 100% view coverage. Usually you have to get into the higher-end models that have a penta-prism... consumer models quite often use a penta-mirror. In this case with your 40D, it does have a penta-prism, but is only has 95% coverage... so your images will have 5% of stuff you didn't even see in your viewfinder!

Yet one more thing to think about when you're composing your shot.... or you could just plan on cropping that 5% later on, but then you're losing pixels which might be vital if you decide to print the shot.

- Bill

[dineshscbs]

Dinesh,

The biggest things I see here are...

1. Your horizon is not level. This is something you really need to keep an eye on when landscape photography - especially when water is involved! You can look into buying a hot-shoe spirit level to help with this.

2. The railing in the bottom right is very distracting, and unfortunately based on the angle and where it is, can't really be cropped out.

3. The exposure is ok, except for the large dark shadow in the foreground. Perhaps zooming in a bit to eliminate the railing would have solved that too?

Keep at it!

- Bill

Hi Bill,

Very sincerely appreciate you commenting on this photo as well.

And I find your suggestion to keep horizon straight to be very valuable.

I guess I need to also think about the distractions as evident by both photos.


Regards,

Dinesh

[dineshscbs]

Hello Geoff,

“I would have tackled this scene differently, Dinesh. Firstly I wouldn't have used a wide angled lens here. For me, there is nothing of interest in the right hand side of this image. Secondly, I wouldn't have used F22 which has given you a long exposure on a scene where you are liable to get some subject movement (boats and wind movement of foliage). Probably F11 would have sufficed for depth of field. Most lenses are a bit soft at the extreme ends of aperture.”

I have recently read a book by Bryan Peterson and was using his suggestions. But I also have taken similar photos using Telephoto lens although using f/32 as per Bryan’s suggestion in his book. Perhaps I should try at least a one stop larger aperture next time

“Probably, I would have shot with the Av setting and used a little bit of negative exposure compensation to allow for possible over exposure of white boats. Alternatively, I would spot meter, in Av mode, on the white areas then switch to manual and use the metered settings as a guide.”

I very much like the suggestion of using the AV mode, use the meter setting as a guide/ starting point while switching to manual mode. Will definitely try this next time.

“However, none of this is a criticism of your basic shooting exposure. It is part of the normal editing procedure when faced with a scene that includes shadows and white areas. You did the right thing by exposing for the spot highlights. The shadows can be recovered during editing.”

Very sincerely appreciate your detailed suggestions on the composition and editing. Many thanks indeed.

Regards,

Dinesh

[dineshscbs]

Thanks, Richard.

I will need to be mindful of this too..

Regards,

Dinesh

[dineshscbs]

Hello Bill,

Thank you kindly for another comment and yes, I do forget about 95% view.

Definitley food for thought for future.

Regards,

Dinesh