1 noob long exposure night time pic

[BenW]

First of all, i'm a photography newbie. Got my first camera on friday, a canon powershot a620.

Taken nearly 300 pics in the last 2 and a half days and just got around to trying manual mode with some long exposure night time piccies. As i dont have a tripod i had the camera on some stacked up books and at an unstable angle too.

So, looking for opinions on this one:



Done quite a lot of processing on photoshop, heres the original



So, i'd like to hear any opinions (good and bad). Feel free to play around with the image if you want.

[BlackDwarf]

I quite like the red illumination of the letters and the surrounding area. The roof in the foreground is good too.

My vote is for the 2nd pic

[nvening]

Would you recomend this camera - My sister needs a digi and she in in art college and i understand this one has more manual controls than normal?

[Kinobe]

I think you've done an ace job and the improvisation of stacking your camera on books instead of a tripod has delivered some good results. Not to sure on the border though? bit overpowering for me but me just being picky.

Kinobe

[Bobster]

yeah its a nice pic, but the fussy frame does detract from the image..

[hoodmeister]

Quite an interesting shot you've got there!
The first one does it for me - the red lettering in the second just proves distracting.

As others have said, watch that border. Frames really are to everyones personal taste - but most people like to keep it relatively simple - finding larger, elaborate ones like this somewhat overpowering.

[shiato storm]

ditto on the frame, but the image is pretty good for one of your 'first'...
keeping it simple works very well.

[BenW]

Thanks everyone, i expected a lot more critisism!



Better?

Hers the file info, seems to have been lost in the processing somewhere. It's not showing an ISO rating but it was 100 or 200

[BenW]

Would you recomend this camera - My sister needs a digi and she in in art college and i understand this one has more manual controls than normal?

It's been excellent so far. Only problem i have is when using full auto mode it will sometimes focus in a strange place (It shows you where its focused which is sometimes multiple places).

This can be overcome by using program mode, this can be set to focus on the center or you can use manual focus mode . This mode also allows you to set ISO speed, white balance (Including custom), drive mode (Single shot, burst, 10s self timer, 2s self timer, custom self timer (This can be upto 30s and upto 10 shots a second apart), effects (B&W/vivid/sepia/natural etc), level that flash comes in (I think or it might be image brightness), metering mode (Evaluate, center weighted av, spot), Quality and size. Theres no shutter speed/apeture settings on here.

All the settings have an auto mode in program mode as well as manual, then thers shutter priority and apeture priority.

Manual mode doesn't have the auto ISO setting, has flash strength setting rather than level normal flash cuts in at, no auto flash setting (Its on or off) and has manual shutter speed/apeture.

So yes, i'd recommend it. Its cheap (£180 inc a 1GB card from amazon), has a lot of manual control, reasonable 4x optical zoon (total 16x with digital), swivel screen for taking photos over crouds of people etc, long battery life and although its a bit bigger/heavier than the competition it has a good feel. You will need to budget for some high capacity rechargable batteries and charger though, it comes with alkaline batteries

[GDVS]

I like it, dark brooding pics always look good to me

[BenW]

I've done another one, taken at about 4/5PM in sepia mode with a short exposure IIRC then modified a lot in photoshop



Anyone able to help me out with the cicular 'steps' in darkness? I lasooed around the center with a big feather (~100pixels) and then inversed then applied a levels layer to get a big on a vingatte (sp?) and it added the stepped effect?