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Thread: Critique for a noob?

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    Critique for a noob?

    New to photography (just got 1st dSLR this week, and have been out everyday so far with it its actually quite addictive!) I think over the course of the week I have improved slightly (have a look at my Flickr page in sig to compare with my earlier attempts...)

    Anyway, here are a couple photo's I got today. 2 of them are of a mountain bike stunt team which came into work today, and the other 2 are of my local town hall (South Shields). Basically I am after any advice you can give me to help me improve, such as composition, WB, PP etc... Really appreciate it.







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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    First two could use a bit more DOF to separate the rider from the background I'd say - wider aperture and a bit more distance with a longer zoom would help.

    Other two have very dark skies, makes them look a little underexposed. Also last photo looks a bit crooked.

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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    ouch, hurts my eyes - turn the saturation down!

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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bobster View Post
    ouch, hurts my eyes - turn the saturation down!
    Done house in background still a distraction but not much I can do about that...



    Still haven't got my head round DoF properly, so didn't want to risk it with the bike stunt shots as I only had one chance to get them, so if I had mucked up the DoF I wouldn't have had any shots at all! So, for those two shots I just used the 'sports' setting. In future I assume I would be better being in aperture priority, at about f/3ish?
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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Just go easy on the post process. Looks like you're flinging effects around like vignettes and graduated darkening. Concentrate on basics first.

    In those shots the background is always going to be a bit distracting even if you blurred it with narrow depth of field - sports mode is the right one to use if you wanted to freeze the action, which you've done successfully. Choice of shooting location/angles would be a better solution.

    For the building shots same thing - it looks like you've used post-process effects when you don't need to and it's making the shots worse, but it could be a camera setting I suppose. But oddly you haven't used post-process to straighten the shot.. that's one of the first and more important uses

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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Cheers for the feedback, will bear that in mind with future shots. Too easy to get carried away with the PP!
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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Quote Originally Posted by dankellys View Post
    Cheers for the feedback, will bear that in mind with future shots. Too easy to get carried away with the PP!
    Yeah I'm sure I was the same when I started What monitor are you using? The colours on those first bike shots really do look very odd on mine, but if they look OK on yours then I would stay well clear of making adjustments because you can't see the results properly. I'd have to check using my monitor at home though one I'm currently on isn't calibrated.

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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Yeah the colours are a little odd, I think I went overboard with the vibrancy/saturation... As for the building shots, they were actually slightly over exposed, which I had to fix in PP, which is why I think the sky now looks slightly under exposed.

    Edit: I'm using the viewsonic VIE 23 IPS monitor
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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    What software are you using?

    edit: OK as long as you can see it's odd as well then the monitor can't be too bad

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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Lightroom 4.4. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the problem with them is due to the idiot who edited them, rather than hardware/software...
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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Quote Originally Posted by dankellys View Post
    Lightroom 4.4. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the problem with them is due to the idiot who edited them, rather than hardware/software...
    Lol that wasn't what I meant. IMHO the first use of software should be to correct mistakes - in fact whenever you take data from a camera and convert it to an image we're looking at the software is already carrying out adjustments and corrections, so adding in your own knowledge of what the scene was actually like (or how you want to represent it) is perfectly reasonable.

    The nice thing about tools like lightroom is they allow you to just correct the mistakes, without affecting the rest. So if you blow the highlights on a building, you can use the recovery slider to just adjust highlight brightness without changing the rest of the image for example. Likewise LR has some great croping/rotating tools.

    But as far as colours go, aside from when the camera has picked the wrong white balance, there's not a lot you probably need to do, again, think 'correction' rather than 'enhancing', as a starting point at least.

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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    Lol that wasn't what I meant.
    I know it wasn't, but its true all the same..


    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    IMHO the first use of software should be to correct mistakes - in fact whenever you take data from a camera and convert it to an image we're looking at the software is already carrying out adjustments and corrections, so adding in your own knowledge of what the scene was actually like (or how you want to represent it) is perfectly reasonable.

    The nice thing about tools like lightroom is they allow you to just correct the mistakes, without affecting the rest. So if you blow the highlights on a building, you can use the recovery slider to just adjust highlight brightness without changing the rest of the image for example. Likewise LR has some great croping/rotating tools.

    But as far as colours go, aside from when the camera has picked the wrong white balance, there's not a lot you probably need to do, again, think 'correction' rather than 'enhancing', as a starting point at least.
    I know what your saying, i definatly went to far with the adjustments, however I have always liked grungy, slightly surreal images. I think I just need to learn how to do it without going to far and when a photo would suit that look and when one woundnt...
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    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Oh I see, well I guess that's going more towards the digital art side of things - have a look at instagram and the various LR preset filters if you're into that kind of thing. There are probably some cross-process effects and grainy/high contrast presets. But get the underlying photo sorted first, then apply the filter.

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    Re: Critique for a noob?

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    But get the underlying photo sorted first, then apply the filter.
    Completely agree. I am also planning on getting a 10 stop ND filter next week, as I really like the look of misty water/cloud motion. All in all, need to concentrate on my composition first and foremost, then try to be a little less hash with the PP. Here is an shot I took the other day with hardly any PP done at all (just a couple of tiny tweeks to clarity and exposure, but nothing major):



    Cheers for all the advice.
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